Chapter VIII 



THE WOOD-BORERS 



OUR two species of Trypoxylon are both slender- 

 waisted black wasps, albopilosum having bunches 

 of snowy white hairs on the first legs, and measuring 

 three quarters of an inch in length, while rubrocinctum 

 is a little smaller, and, as the name implies, wears a red 

 girdle. 



Although these wasps are called wood-borers, they 

 will use convenient cavities in any material. When we 

 went out to our summer cottage, in the last days of June, 

 1895, we found many little wasps of the species Trypo- 

 xylon rubrocinctum busily working about a brick smoke- 

 house on the place. Closer examination showed that in 

 the mortar between the bricks were many little openings 

 leading back for a considerable distance, which were 

 occupied by the wasps. It would seem that these holes 

 were excavated by some other agency than the wasps 

 themselves, as they were so much too deep for their pur- 

 poses that before using them they built a mud partition 

 178 



