242 HYMENOPTERA. 



the specimen in hand is one and a half inches long, 

 with small waist, stout, spiny legs, and large, yellowish 

 brown wings. Strong as the insect is for a wasp, it 

 seems hardly possible for it to render powerless so 

 large and formidable an animal as the Mygale spider. 

 This it does, however, most successfully. When the 

 wasp discovers a spider, it circles about it in the air 

 until a favorable moment arrives, when it darts down 

 and thrusts the sting, with its load of poison, into the 

 body. This is sometimes repeated two or three times. 

 When the spider is paralyzed, it is dragged to a suit- 

 able place, where a hole is dug for it, one egg is laid 

 near the body, and the hole is filled with earth. Some- 

 times the wasp in other species, and probably in this 

 one, kills the spider ; but it never seems to know the 

 fact, and the consequences to the larvae are probably 

 fatal, especially where only one spider is supplied for 

 food.^ 



VESPID.E. 



The paper or social wasps are represented by Vespa 

 viaculata, Linn. (Fig. 194,^). When the hairs are 

 cleaned from the body, the prothorax is seen as a nar- 

 row collar soldered to the mesothorax above. The 

 mesothorax (Fig. 194, //') is large and rounded, bear- 

 ing the larger wings. At the basal joint of these wings 

 are small, horny, movable shoulder lappets (/^), which 

 we have already seen in the Lepidoptera, and which 

 are concave on the inner side. The extreme poste- 



1 For further information, see Dr. Lincecum, "The Taran- 

 tula-Killer of Texas," American Naturalist, Vol. I., p. 137; 

 Riley, Avierican Ento?nologist, Vol. I., pp. in, 128. 



