HUNTERS OF LARGE ORTHOPTERA 161 



hopper; we do not know whether she had just caught it or 

 had had it there somewhere all the time during her many 

 attempts at digging in this region; but, from what we saw 

 later, we judge the wasp undoubtedly had the hopper in hid- 

 ing. She carried it fully three feet beyond her hole and 

 hunted for five minutes before she rediscovered her burrow. 

 She then resumed digging earnestly, going in and out me- 

 chanically, like a toy wound up, and coming out two or three 

 times to kick the dirt further back from the mouth of the. 

 nest. She worked earnestly, as if the work was now full 

 of meaning to her. 



Disturbed by a passing boy, she flew around, came back 

 and examined her prey and returned to more digging, 

 brought the hopper a foot nearer and propped the thing up 

 in a tuft of grass and went back diligently to digging, lug- 

 ging out in her jaws loads of earth as large as her head. She 

 held the masses of soft dirt up against the mandibles with 

 her front legs as she carried it out backwards, to keep the 

 load from falling to pieces, so it looked as if she were carry- 

 ing a double armful up to her chin. As the burrow grew 

 deeper she backed away from it further, to perhaps a dis- 

 tance of two inches or more, before dropping her load, and 

 occasionally paused to sweep the whole pile back with her 

 forelegs. 



We examined her grasshopper, a Dissosteira Carolina 

 Linn., and were astonished to find that its hind legs were 

 gone. Evidently they had been carefully bitten off, though 

 probably not by atratum, for the cut was smooth, and not 

 lacerated as the wounds would have been if the legs had been 

 torn off. 



The same day we found another hopper in the field with 

 the jumping legs neatly cut off. Both of these mutilated 

 hoppers displayed all normal activities except jumping. 



After about ten minutes more of digging, this one brought 



