SOME SOCIAL WASPS 295 



did not swim nor spin about, as do the water striders, but 

 rested calmly on the water with legs spread; and when 

 they had finished they arose lightly on the wing and flew 

 off. Sometimes they spent a long time there, probably for 

 the purpose of cooling off. 



On one occasion, a Pelopoeus was lying on its side, mo- 

 tionless and partly submerged. At first we suspected a 

 tragedy that the insect had come to the water exhausted 

 or had made a false step in alighting and had been drowned 

 but when we approached and essayed to pick it up, it 

 darted away. However, two Ammophila sp. were taken 

 from the pond drowned. We do not know whether the 

 water really has its dangers for them, or whether these had 

 merely come to this spot when already injured or exhausted 

 and ready to drop. 



Vespula germanica Fabr. [S. A. Rohwer]. 



We hesitate to call this little wasp a scavenger, and 

 yet we have seen it enjoying discarded fragments of our 

 food so often that we have grown to expect to see it on 

 the deserted picnic ground, feasting on the remains left 

 from the lunch-baskets. On one day, August 21, we cap- 

 tured twenty workers, and many more were present, feeding 

 on grape- jelly, greasy chicken-bones and other fragments 

 left by the picnickers of the previous day. While feeding, 

 they are as intent as bees on a water-melon rind, and may 

 be captured with ease. They seem practically omnivorous. 

 We have seen them eating of an astonishing variety, includ- 

 ing grapes, pears, apple-sauce, paw-paw, dead roach, juice 

 in salmon can, cold broth, flowers of buck-brush, madeira 

 vine, banana, eyes of a dead rat. Several were seen sipping 

 water at the spring. A few hours after a young rooster 



