HUNTERS OF SMALL ORTHOPTERA 153 



gathered within a radius of twelve inches from the nest. 

 The great majority of them were taken from either the right 

 or the left side of the hole, where she could work on the same 

 level ; a few times she brought a fragment from above the 

 hole, but only once or twice did she attempt to bring any- 

 thing from beneath the burrow. Occasionally she would 

 tug away at something too large or too heavy for her, but 

 she would soon let it go. She appeared nervous and dis- 

 criminating, and seemed to have a hard time in finding just 

 what she wanted. Fearing to lose her and her identity, we 

 took her when the hole was nearly filled. 



Upon opening the burrow, we had some difficulty in 

 accurately following its contour because of the entanglement 

 of grass roots. The hole seemed to be about two and one- 

 half inches deep. The lower third was a chamber containing 

 three crickets of two species, Gryllus pennsylvanicus 

 Burm. nymph [A. N. Caudell], and Nemobius fasciatus 

 DeG. [A. N. Caudell]. Above this the gallery was all 

 packed with soil. The wasp must have used all the available 

 dirt for the hole at the time when we arrived upon the scene. 

 Only the upper one-third of the bore was filled with debris. 

 When we first opened the chamber and found the lively lot 

 of crickets, we thought we had made an error and had 

 broken into a crickets' nest. Soon we spied the wasp's egg, 

 white and slightly crescent-shaped, fastened to one of the 

 crickets where the leg joins the body, and curving around the 

 right side until it was visible from the dorsal side. The 

 crickets were active when stimulated in the legs, antennae 

 and mouth-parts, and, while they could not actually hop, 

 they could walk for a few steps when prodded. All three 

 were males. In all probability the egg was deposited at 

 about 2 : 30 p. m., but we could not tell whether it had been 

 deposited on the first, second or last cricket brought in. By 

 the next morning, they had all walked some distance from 



