BEHAVIOR OF POMPILID WASPS 47 



examined her spider once more, pulled and turned it around, 

 legs up, and went back to her digging. Presently she re- 

 turned again to the spider and proceeded to bite it on the 

 ventral side of the body between the second and third pair 

 of legs; we could distinctly see her palpi move and we sus- 

 pected that she was sucking the juices. When she with- 

 drew after about a minute she stood "licking her chops," 

 repeated the performance and then left promptly with such 

 a strange flight of abandonment that we doubted if she 

 would ever return. We inspected the spider and, sure 

 enough, the body wall was broken at the point mentioned 

 and a large drop of clear juice had exuded. 



The morning passed and we saw no more of her. 

 Whether she became disgusted with the hard soil or offended 

 at the disturbance we know not. But it was interesting to 

 see how she was determined to get some good out of her 

 spider by at least having a meal before abandoning it. 1 



The tiny parasitic fly had been hovering over the hole 

 not over the spider during this entire performance, and 

 was still poised in the air over the burrow when we left the 

 scene, long after the wasp had given up the enterprise. 



The spider was taken home. At 10 o'clock that evening 

 it responded slightly to stimulus, but by the next morning 

 it was dead. 



On another morning, as we were walking across the field 

 past a spot from which all the grass had been trodden, we 

 suddenly scared up from the edge of the grass a P. tropicus. 

 She had been engaged in carrying a spider, Lycosa frondi- 

 cola Em. female [N. Banks], not quite mature, but larger 

 than herself. After a quarter of an hour she appeared 



1 It is a question whether Pompiloides tropicus does not live entirely 

 on animal juices, for while Robertson found many species of Pom- 

 pilidae feeding upon the nectar of various flowers, he has not *one 

 record as far as we know of P, tropicus QOtning to the flowers. 



