OBSERVATIONS ON INSECT LIFE 191 



with brown and white pebbles standing out against 

 a background of purple slate in so prominent a 

 manner that any one might see it Had the wasp 

 intelligently attempted to construct a conspicuous nest 

 it could scarcely have been more successful. I was 

 disappointed at finding that the pretty example of 

 harmonization was but a myth, but I had received an 

 excellent lesson in the danger of arriving at a conclusion 

 without careful and repeated observations. 



I found the little digger-wasp, Ammophila^ very 

 active at the end of June in the open glades of the 

 forest at an altitude of 8000 feet. It is an insect of 

 wide altitudinal distribution and ascends to at least 

 11,000 feet. It is a slender black species somewhat 

 under an inch in length, with the sides clothed in a 

 silvery pile and the front two-thirds of the abdomen 

 coloured in a shining red. On a patch of short grass 

 the wasp was incessantly digging, hunting for cater- 

 pillars, or feeding on the sweet flowers. It was 

 amusing to watch its untiring industry in the excavation 

 of its tunnels, thrusting out the soil in spouts of sand, 

 sweeping it backwards with its fore legs and dislodging 

 the larger fragments with its mandibles. 



The marvellous instincts of these wasps have been 

 displayed in the minute and accurate observations 

 of Fabre. The Ammophila captures caterpillars, 

 paralyzes them by a succession of stings into the 

 different segments of the body, crushes their heads 

 between its mandibles and then drags them off to 



1 Mr. Bainbrigge Fletcher, who kindly examined my specimens of 

 this wasp, tells me that an exactly similar specimen from Abbottabad 

 has been returned to Pusa named by Mr. R. E. Turner of the British 

 Museum as Psammophila tydei^ but that the species is an Ammophila 

 according to Bingham's diagnosis of the genus. 



