1 62 WASP STUDIES AFIELD 



her prey nearer, to within one foot of the hole. She carried 

 it by straddling it right-side-up, grasping its antennae in her 

 mandibles, clasping her forelegs around its neck, and strug- 

 gling over the ground with her two hind pairs of legs. 

 The wonderful modification of the legs of this species, as 

 shown in figure 36, shows how capable they are of scraping 

 and carrying the soil, as well as long enough gracefully to 

 straddle and ride home a huge grasshopper. After another 

 .brief period of digging, the wasp moved the hopper to the 

 very brink of the hole and swung it around so it was directly 

 facing the sloping burrow, although it had formerly been 

 behind the hole. She went in, turned around and re- 

 appeared at once, head up, seized the grasshopper's antennae 

 and dragged it in out of sight. The hole was a close fit 

 for the prey; it was with difficulty that she squeezed it in. 

 For only one brief minute she remained inside the chamber 

 with her booty ; then she scrambled out and scooped in a few 

 armfuls of dirt, arranging each load slightly but packing 

 it little. As the channel filled, she tamped the dirt down 

 more. She scooped in each armful of earth with a circular 

 stroke, cutting a crescent-shaped area out of the tiny hill, 

 smoothly and systematically like a workman carefully scoop- 

 ing sand away from one side of a heap (fig. 37). Such 

 precision rather startled us, since we were accustomed to 

 Bembif' way of scratching over the whole region. 



With her head she packed it constantly tighter as she 

 neared the top. When the depression was nearly full she 

 stopped taking the loose earth, but bit up chunks of firm, 

 fresh dirt which she carried in her mandibles and broke 

 to pieces on the site, just as Sphex does with little clods, 

 rubbing and pressing down the soil with them until they 

 were ground pieces and became a part of the firm pack 

 of pulverized earth. 



Just as she appeared at the mouth of the hole after having 



