More Hunting Wasps 



to the tube, to close it up. The task is done. 

 She flies away. 



Next day I inspect this strange burrow. 

 The Spider is at the bottom of the silken 

 tube, isolated on every side, as though in a 

 hammock. The Wasp's egg is glued not to 

 the ventral surface of the victim but to the 

 back, about the middle, near the beginning 

 of the abdomen. It is white, cylindrical and 

 about a twelfth of an inch long. The few 

 bits of mortar which I saw carried have 

 but very roughly blocked the silken chamber 

 at the end. Thus Pompilus apicalis lays her 

 quarry and her eggs not in a burrow of her 

 own making, but in the Spider's actual house. 

 Perhaps the silken tube belongs to this very 

 victim, which in that event provides both 

 board and lodging. What a shelter for the 

 larva of this Pompilus : the warm retreat and 

 downy hammock of the Segestria ! 



Here then, already, we have two Spider- 

 huntresses, the Ringed Pompilus and P. 

 apicalis, who, unversed in the miner's craft, 

 establish their offspring inexpensively in ac- 

 cidental chinks in the walls, or even in the 

 lair of the Spider on whom the larva feeds. 

 In these cells, acquired without exertion, they 

 build only an attempt at a wall with a few 

 fragments of mortar. But we must beware 

 28 



