GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 361 



can find, and only sometimes modifies them to suit her 

 needs; if she cannot ascend a precipitous slope directly, she 

 will in time contrive some indirect way to scale it. In carry- 

 ing her prey, she walks backwards dragging her burden, but 

 also sometimes walks sidewise dragging it at right angles to 

 her own body. She seizes it by any of its members that 

 may offer themselves as a convenient handle at the moment. 

 Other wasps, described in the preceding pages, presented 

 various digressions from the customary way of the species 

 of transporting their prey. 



Some wasps are very exacting in their construction or 

 selection of a nest; others admit a considerable variety, as 

 for instance Try.poxylon clavatum., which is thus far known 

 to use for its cells the made-over cells of the mud-dauber, 

 holes in logs or fence-posts, or to tunnel deftly into wood 

 to make its own burrows. 



Tachysphex terminatiis, originally a digger in sand, 

 seemed to be adapting itself to the loose dirt on a clay bank, 

 but the nests were crude in shape and subnormal in size. 



While Priononyx thomae carries the prey to the orifice 

 of the burrow, enters, comes up, grasps it by the antennae 

 and pulls it in, on one occasion she hastily dumped it into 

 the hole immediately upon arriving and crowded in after it. 



This list of individual digressions from the customary 

 ways of the species might be continued indefinitely. 

 Whether these truants from conventionality show by their 

 independent actions a type of degeneration or a degree of 

 development superior to that of their fellow-beings we 

 shall not now venture to surmise; at least not until that 

 moot point has been decided for the human species. 

 However, be that as it may, the first requisite for improve- 

 ment of the species or even of its ability to hold its own 

 in a constantly changing environment is precisely this varia- 

 bility, this capacity to adopt or contrive new ways. 



