Wasps 



blackberry. The species which belong to the genus Trypoxylon 

 and its close allies as a rule make use of the burrows of other in- 

 sects. They sometimes store the insects which they collect in 

 the deserted cells of a mud-dauber, and sometimes in the small 

 round holes made by wood-boring beetles in old trees. Many 

 of the species seem to store up plant lice but others capture and 

 paralyze different kinds of spiders. There is a very important 

 wasp which belongs to this group which does not occur in the 

 United States but which I am trying to introduce. This is the 

 Ampulex which preys upon cockroaches. A correspondent in 

 Mauritius, D'Emmerez de Charmoy, of the museum at Port Louis, 

 has promised to send me some of these creatures alive. He states 

 that they enter the houses and prey upon the domestic cockroach. 

 Perkins, quoted by Sharp, says that in West Africa cockroaches 

 are stung by these wasps and placed in confinement in some such 

 spot as a keyhole and in one case one was apparently prevented 

 from afterward escaping by the wasp carrying some heavy 

 nails into the keyhole. Rothney, also quoted by Sharp, says, 

 " I saw two or three of these wasps (A ruficornis) collar a pe- 

 culiar cockroach by the antennae and lead it off into a crack in 

 the bark, but as the cockroach reappeared smiling each time I 

 don't know what was up." 



Numbers of other most interesting forms occur here, but 

 those interested must go to the Peckhams' book and to Ashmead's 

 interesting paper entitled, "The Habits of the Aculeate Hymen- 

 optera," published in Psyche, January to May, 1894, and to the 

 papers referred to by the latter author. 



The genus Ammophila contains some of the most interesting 

 forms in this family, and the habits of one or more species have 

 been described in the most interesting way by the Peckhams, by 

 the late William Hamilton Gibson, and Dr. S. W. Williston, and 

 by Mr. Theodore Pergande. These are the insects which use 

 tools. Their burrows are deep in the earth and are carefully con- 

 cealed by the insertion of a stone, over which dry earth is scraped. 

 When the female returns with a caterpillar, (and she travels un- 

 erringly to this concealed burrow for a long distance,) the earth 

 and stone are removed, the caterpillar is carried down into the 

 burrow and the mouth is once more concealed until another 

 caterpillar is brought. The solicitude exhibited by the maternal 

 wasp for fear her burrow may be discovered has been vividly 



