148 LARV.E UNDER WATER-LILY LEAVES. [PART II. 



Another ingeniously constructed infant nursery 

 came under my notice whilst on a visit to a friend 

 near Marlow. Having observed that several of 

 the water-lily leaves floating on the surface of a 

 moat were perforated by cleanly cut circular holes, 

 nearly the size of a florin, I was induced to turn 

 up these and some of the adjacent leaves, when 



Janeiro, and refers to a paper in the Journal of the Asiatic 

 Society of Bengal, by Lieut. Hutton, who describes a kind of 

 Sphex and also a Pompilus which construct their cells side 

 by side, and store them with spiders. 



Kirby and Spence assert (apparently on the authority of 

 Bonnet) that the Mason Wasp "not only encloses a living 

 caterpillar along with its eggs in the cell, which it carefully 

 closes, but at the expiration of a few days, when the young 

 grub has appeared and consumed its provision, reopens the 

 nest, incloses a second caterpillar, and again shuts the mouth." 

 Can it be that the caterpillars which were thus seen to be 

 brought to the nest on successive days, and supposed to be for 

 the eggs collectively, may have been, as in the case I have 

 mentioned, each destined for its particular egg ? In the nest 

 I have described I am satisfied that it was impossible for the 

 parent Wasp to communicate with the upper cells except by 

 destroying those below it. 



Further notices of similar insects will be found in Gosse's 

 Letters from Alabama^p^ge 244, where there is also given an 

 illustration representing a Pelopaem fiavipes in the act of 

 carrying a spider to its cell ; and in Sir James E. Tennent's 

 Ceylon, i. 256. According to this latter author the Sphegidce 

 there lay their eggs in the pupse of other insects before de- 

 positing them in the cells. 



