BEES HUMBLE AND OTHERWISE 71 



for a young and tender grub. The grub, by the 

 way, must be as expert an anatomist as its mother, 

 for it has to feed for a long time only on such 

 parts of the caterpillar's body as can be eaten 

 without bringing its life to an end. 



These amazing wasp-surgeons are by no means 

 uncommon. In this country they are mostly in 

 small sizes, but there is one that occasionally 

 appears in the Isle of Wight whose prey is the 

 honey bee. One of large size and more likely to 

 be met with is one or other of the Ammophila 

 genus, frequenting such sandy places as the dunes 

 by Liverpool, Lowestoft, Deal, and other places. 

 The Ammophilas or ' sand-lovers ' are extraordi- 

 narily long of waist, the abdomen appearing to be 

 so detached from the body that when the insect 

 is flying it looks like two insects closely following 

 one another. They are sometimes black, banded 

 with red, sometimes black with yellow stripes, and 

 sometimes the stripes only appear as dots. 



There is no more interesting sight than a colony 

 of these very busy wasps digging their holes in 

 the sand, covering them with flat stones while they 

 go hunting, and dragging home their prey with 

 great appearance of fussiness and anxiety, like 

 policemen quite new to their work. One of them 

 has gained the almost unique eminence among 

 animals of a tool-user, for it has been seen to keep 

 a selected stone to use as a rammer for finishing 

 off the tampion with which it finally closes down 

 its living larder and nursery. 



