i 4 WASP STUDIES AFIELD 



the answers to the many mysteries which the first year had 

 left us. 



On the first day we arrived at the conclusion that there 

 was a great predominance of males. In all the morning's 

 dance we saw only three mating flights. In one of these 

 cases, the united pair were in flight when they were knocked 

 to the ground by two other males. A struggle ensued in 

 which all the males were trying to gain access to the female. 

 They were so intent upon this affair that we could easily 

 get close enough to see all this. Even as we watched, more 

 and more males left the flight and joined the struggling 

 mass, and strove together on the ground before us for sev- 

 eral minutes or maybe it was seconds. So large an assem- 

 blage were they, and so intent upon their business, that we 

 could have scooped up the mass in a handful, and the hand 

 would have been filled to overflowing. Eventually the fe- 

 male and one of the males broke away from the mass and 

 sped off on the wing. The train of admirers which fol- 

 lowed them formed one of the prettiest sights we have ever 

 witnessed in the insect world; the wasps extricated them- 

 selves, one by one, from the heap and followed the pair in 

 unbroken succession, like the wool spun from the distaff, in 

 a long, smooth line of glinting green and yellow, pursuing 

 them so rapidly that before the fugitive female had gone 

 fifty feet they had overtaken her again and formed the 

 teeming mass around her. This struggle continued again 

 for several seconds until one could not tell what had become 

 of the female; but presently, one by one, they abandoned the 

 conflict and returned to the dance. 



As we have described for the previous year, their flight 

 was low, near to the ground. The wasps were in motion 

 for hours at a time, never resting; if one chanced to drop 

 out or fall to the earth for an instant, another, perhaps 

 mistaking it for a female, or for some other unknown 



