HUNTERS OF LARGE ORTHOPTERA 205 



of a plant and tried her jaws on it, but apparently it was too 

 tough. She turned to a blade of green grass, which bent 

 and swayed under her weight when she alighted on it. As 

 she bit the blade off with her jaws, I expected to see her 

 tumble when it severed, since she was sawing the branch 

 on which she was sitting. But while the cut portion was 

 hanging by a mere thread, she spread her wings and flew 

 away, breaking it off as she flew. On her next trip, she 

 flew far away and returned after four minutes with a long 

 timothy stem protruding four inches from her body. These 

 wasps always carry their grasses under their bodies, grasping 

 the anterior end in their mandibles, and alight and enter the 

 hole without shifting their burden. When we visited them 

 on October 3, three were at work all the forenoon, busily 

 carrying dry grass into their chosen bee-holes, and even at 

 4: 45 p. m., when it was quite cloudy and dismal, one was 

 still faithful to her task. Thus the season ended without 

 our having ascertained whether they use this material for 

 bedding, for food or as a plug to close the orifice. 



We are not alone in this observation, for Packard 20 finds 

 the same insect, under the name Sphex tibialis St. Fargeau. 

 behaving somewhat similarly. He says Mr. J. Angus, who 

 reared this species, sent him a larva in a cavity previously 

 tunnelled by Xylocopa virginica in a pine board. The hole 

 was six inches long, and the oval, cylindrical cocoons were 

 packed loosely side by side where there was room, or one a 

 little in advance of the other. The interstices were filled 

 with bits of rope, which had perhaps been bitten up by the 

 wasp itself. The end of the cell was filled for a distance of 

 two inches with a coarse sedge arranged in layers, as if 

 rammed in like gun-wadding. The cocoons are 80 to 90 

 hundredths of an inch long, oval, lanceolate, somewhat like 



20 Guide to the Study of Insects, p. 168. 1889. 



