sherwood] AN AUGUST DAY DUEL 161 



The writer has found that the building of individual keys inter- 

 ests even beginners. Since it constitutes one very definite purpose 

 for note taking, it has a tendency to inspire greater accuracy in the 

 latter. After learning to recognize a few of the common species, 

 one may turn with greater pleasure to the study of habits and the 

 conditions under which the various forms live. Identification will 

 be the more certain and accordingly the field observations having to 

 do fish with activities will have the greater value. 



An August Day Duel 



Helen Lee Sherwood 

 New York City 



NE warm August afternoon a thread-waisted mud 

 dauber was very busy collecting spiders for her 

 larvae when they should hatch from the eggs she 

 was laying. She was a graceful, slender wasp 

 with a long thread-like waist, and in the sunlight 

 her armoured body was of a bright metallic blue. 

 She had been building a nest of five, long, deli- 

 cate columns of gray mud, placed side by side like the pipes of 

 an organ and finely etched where each layer of mud had dried. 

 It had taken long, long hours and many trips back and forth 

 to the clay-bottomed pond some hundred feet from the hay 

 mow on one of whose rafters the nest was built, but the little 

 wasp had enjoyed her swift flights in sunlight and her skillful 

 architectural work. She had rejoiced to see how quickly each bit 

 of clay or mud had helped to lengthen the wonderful cells she built. 

 Now it was late in the day and three cells were filled with spiders 

 that she had caught and stung. In each finished cell there were 

 ten or more little spiders, some dead and some only paralyzed, 

 packed tightly together, and on one of these in each cell was a tiny 

 wasp egg. The mother had closed each cell as she laid an egg, and 

 in two or three days a tiny, blind, white grub would hatch and 

 begin to grow very fast as it ate one after another of the juicy 

 spiders around it. When they were gone and the baby wasp had 

 grown large and strong it would spin a soft cocoon all around itself 

 and spend the long winter sleeping, as a pupa. In the spring a 

 limp, little wasp with a soft body and helpless wings would break 



