THE SAND-LOVING AMMOPHILA 233 



around it when the gallery is filled. This, too, is fitted in 

 with pretty accuracy. Sometimes a single clod is used; 

 sometimes two or three form the partition. In one nest 

 which we dug out, the mother had utilized a round pellet 

 of rabbit's dung for this purpose. It fitted the hole so nicely 

 that it must have been forced in with considerable energy. 



Even in their ways of meeting obstacles which chance to 

 come in their way, Ammophilas display more than the 

 average good sense. They do not merely kick the objects 

 back out of their way temporarily, but they pick them up and 

 carry them away, or, in the case of straws or leaf-fragments, 

 they fly with them to a safe place to deposit them. How 

 unlike this is to the stupid Pompilus marginatus which we 

 saw digging in the bottom of a little funnel-shaped depres- 

 sion where a clod rolled in upon it and seriously hindered 

 it. Six times the silly creature carried that clod up and laid 

 it on the brink of the depression, from where, as soon as 

 her back was turned, it rolled down again and bumped her. 

 Thus A.pictipennis seems to be a tidy and exact housekeeper 

 in all details ; she always carries out the dirt and piles it up 

 in a neat mound at a certain distance from the hole, and 

 in the direction opposite the horizontal chamber at the 

 bottom. In one case which we noticed, the site of the hole 

 was surrounded by grass, but even this difficulty did not 

 defeat her; she carried all her diggings to the appointed 

 spot, even though she had to carry them through a tangled 

 tuft of grass which must have been to her a veritable jungle. 



Another abnormal instance which caught our attention 

 was an unusually large nest. It was already about two 

 inches deep, a little beyond normal depth, when we found it, 

 and the wasp was continuing the excavating. There were 

 two piles of dirt; one, the smaller, was almost at the brink 

 of the hole, and the other twelve inches away. She was 

 carrying all her diggings to the more distant pile all the time 



