THE SAND-LOVING AMMOPHILA 217 



her prey in this new-fashioned way. After carrying it for 

 ten feet she dropped it and started to remove the lid off 

 her nest. In our eagerness to see all, one of us pressed too 

 close and she flew away a short distance in alarm. In a 

 moment she walked back to the cut-worm, examined it and 

 gave it a reproving sting on its under side near the pro-legs, 

 but we could not distinguish which pair. She then strad- 

 dled and seized it in the manner already described, and car- 

 ried it off, making a very perfect circle about three feet in 

 diameter, and dropped it at the identical spot from where 

 a moment before she had indignantly taken it. A strange 

 way, this, of responding to disturbance! She then gave it 

 two impressions about the head with the mandibles, then 

 passed the tip of her abdomen on its under side as it lay, 

 ventral downward, and felt or rather probed in a half- 

 dozen places, sliding her abdomen continuously backward 

 until she reached a spot just in the rear of the last pair of 

 pro-legs; there she thrust in her sting and let it remain for 

 several seconds. We had thought at first, when she felt the 

 integument with her abdomen at a number of places, that 

 she was stinging the caterpillar, but when we saw the way 

 she deliberately thrust in her sting and let it quietly remain 

 there for some time, we decided that these former touches 

 had been only of a testing or probing nature. She then re- 

 sumed her work where she had left off, and opened her hole 

 by removing one mouthful of clods. She darted in and re- 

 appeared almost instanter, carried in her cherished prey, 

 remained inside two minutes, came out again and imme- 

 diately began to fill the hole. While she was inside, we 

 took the opportunity of observing the site closely. There 

 was very little loose dirt or dust about the hole; all that had 

 been taken from the hole had been carried five inches away, 

 across a tuft of grass, and piled up neatly in spite of the 

 difficulties of always clambering through the tangle of grass- 



