WASP STUDIES AFIELD 



INTRODUCTION 



If any excuse were needed for welcoming another work 

 in addition to the nearly three hundred books and articles 

 that have been published on the habits of the solitary wasps, 

 it would suffice to point to the fact that no other group of 

 insects has so fascinated and baffled the student of animal 

 behavior, the psychologist and the philosopher. When 

 among contemporary generalizers we find an eminent 

 psychologist, William McDougall, claiming for the solitary 

 wasps "a degree of intelligence which (with the doubtful 

 exception of the higher mammals) approaches most nearly 

 to the human," and the illustrious Bergson using the same 

 insects as paradigms of instinct in the sense of "intuition" 

 as contrasted with "intelligence," there is surely need of a 

 renewed presentation of facts already established, of the 

 publication of new observations and of a serious attempt 

 at dispassionate interpretation like that made in the present 

 volume. 



The solitary wasps comprise some 10,000 described species 

 scattered over the torrid and temperate regions of the globe 

 and representing a number of more or less closely related 

 natural families of Hymenoptera. To the entomologist these 

 wasps are of unusual interest for several reasons. First, they 

 are in physical structure the most superbly specialized of in- 

 sects, so that they bear to creatures like the beetles, flies, and 

 grasshoppers, somewhat the same relation that the members 

 of the cat family bear to the rodents, ruminants and insecti- 

 vores. Even the social Hymenoptera seem to have a less 



