WASPS, SOCIAL AND SOLITARY 



most interesting notes on the subject have been made 

 by M. GoureaUj who gives an account of finding two 

 spiders that had been mutilated by wasps, one of them 

 having had all of the legs cut off, and the other all but 

 the first pair. At another time a wasp that was flying 

 near him let fall a spider, which he captured before it 

 could be recovered by the owner. The wasp escaped, 

 so that he could not determine the species, but the 

 spider's legs had been removed. He concluded that in- 

 stead of stinging the spiders the wasps had mutilated 

 them so that they could not run away. He does not seem 

 to realize that death would certainly result from such 

 an operation. 



Vespa germanica often cuts off the wings of a dead 

 wasp, or even cuts its body into two parts, before flying 

 away with it, but this is only when the captured insect 

 is too large to be handled in any other way; and Pom- 

 pilus fuscipennis sometimes cuts off one or more legs 

 from her spider, although without any regular method 

 of procedure. 



Agenia bombycina finds a nesting -place to her liking 

 on our smoke-house, in the crevice between the bricks 

 and the wooden door-frame, where she makes clusters 

 of little mud cells, putting one mutilated spider into 

 each, and storing about one a day. Her locality sense 

 244 



