202 WASP STUDIES AFIELD 



three inches. She moved in a manner that indicated that 

 she knew where she was going, and yet we are not certain 

 that she was going anywhere in particular. She went 

 straight across the field for thirty feet until she arrived at a 

 deep furrow down the side ; then she turned at a right angle 

 and followed directly down this for twenty feet more and 

 plunged into a mole-hole. She may have used it without 

 hesitation simply because it happened to be in her path, but 

 she travelled with all the precision and familiarity of a 

 man walking home from his office and turning in at his 

 own door. She remained in the hole nine minutes, then 

 emerged hastily and soared off to the woods again. We tried 

 to dig out the burrow, but our searches in the loose sand 

 were all in vain. 



While, in this instance, we found C. cyaneum dragging 

 her cricket across the field, this method seems not to be 

 constant. Hungerford and Williams 18 write that in Greely 

 County, Kansas, one was observed climbing a clay bank, 

 carrying a mature female of Centhophilus, evidently striving 

 to reach an altitude sufficient to enable her to fly to her nest, 

 and the Peckhams find that one, after running a little way, 

 arose and flew lightly, for about eighteen feet, to a hole on 

 the bare hillside. Here, too, Peckham's wasp differed from 

 ours in that it had its hole in readiness on the surface, while 

 ours, if she had a hole, had it concealed in a rodent burrow. 

 The Peckhams illustrate a very pretty burrow of this wasp 

 in which one egg was deposited amid seven crickets, Gryllus 

 abbreviatus Linn. From their later observations, they find 

 she does not make a new nest for each egg, but she provi- 

 sions a number of cells leading from one gallery. They 

 record 17 a very interesting incident which gives one the im- 



16 Ent. News 23: 247. 1912. 



17 Bull. Wis. Nat. Hist. Soc. i : 85. 1900. 



