( xliii ) 



menced her work, I was able to follow closely. She examined 

 the larva very carefully from head to tail, and then went 

 down the hole and brought up an ' armful ' of soil, held by 

 the fore limbs up against her ' chin.' She walked away with 

 this, and deposited it about 3 inches away, giving, at the 

 exact moment when she put it down, a short sharp buzz. 

 This was repeated once or twice, and then, having placed the 

 tip of her abdomen at the orifice of the burrow, she felt her 

 way down backwards, and before she disappeared seized the 

 larva just behind the head by her mandibles and drew it 

 down after her. But the chamber at the bottom was not 

 big enough, so with loud buzzing she pushed her way past 

 the larva and came out again; then, standing over the hole, 

 she put her head down and seized the larva as far in front of 

 its hinder extremity as she could reach, and dragged it up to 

 the surface. The next step was to grip, between her fore- 

 legs, the extreme end of the larva, and to shift her mandibles 

 so as to get a fresh hold further forward; thus she lifted it 

 again, and in this way dragged it right out of the hole and 

 laid it at the brink, the concavity of its posture directed 

 towards the hole, the two extremities at the very edge. She 

 then went down again and brought up another armful of earth, 

 depositing it in the manner previously described. Having 

 done this several times she again went down backwards, 

 precisely as before, and dragged her victim down by its ' neck.' 

 But again the chamber at the bottom of the burrow could not 

 contain this large larva, and its hinder end projected up into 

 the burrow. So once more the unskilful wasp had to push 

 her way out with loud buzzings, and drag the larva out again 

 in the same way, and further enlarge the chamber. Still it 

 did not prove big enough, and this all happened four more 

 times ! On the sixth occasion, the larva not having been 

 disposed quite exactly in the right position at the mouth of 

 the hole, when she backed down she caught hold of the posterior 

 and not the anterior end. The larva then moved very feebly 

 (it had had a lot of pulling about !) and the wasp at once 

 perceived that something was wrong. She hurried out of the 

 hole and examined it very carefully. She then adjusted it 

 to the proper position, went down again, and dragged the 



