320 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [15:6— Nov., 1919 



In spite of the fact that the spider has his safe retreat his life 

 is not without its thrilling adventure. There is a black wasp 

 continually on the watch to capture him and use his plump carcass 

 for food for her young. (Fig. 6.) I watched one of these wasps 

 as she spied her prey running over the sand in the early evening. 

 She darted toward him and he scurried to cover, running into a 

 clump of nearby bunch grass. She however followed him and 

 pounced upon him, quickly paralyzing him with a thrust of her 

 sting. Then she dragged him over the sand as she rapidly backed 

 up, seeming to handle the heavy load with ease for she pulled him 

 over the sticks and stones that lay in her way without hesitation. 

 This in spite of the fact that, as I later found out by weighing 

 both, she weighed only .i8 grams while the spider weighed .82 

 grams. She travelled with her load some four rods from the point 

 where she had killed the spider before she dropped him and went 

 scurrying around to find her hole. She ran about in a tortuous 

 course over an area of some four square yards often crossing and 

 recrossing her tracks. It took her about a minute to locate the 

 hole she had previously excavated. 



I had seen the wasp busy making her excavation before but 

 had never seen her bring in her prey. She digs a hole in the sand 

 much as a dog would, scratching with the fore feet and sending 

 the sand out between the wide-spread hind legs. The forefeet 

 of the wasp are flattened and broad so making a very serviceable 

 pair of excavating tools. The hole, dug in a little hillside, is about 

 as large as ones thumb. The opening is semicircular, the bottom a 

 straight line approximately, the top up-arched. 



Having found the hole she made a bee line for the spider which 

 she had dragged a yard beyond the hole, seized him with her jaws 

 again and pulled him to the mouth of the burrow. (Fig. 7.) She 

 backed in with him so promptly that both were out of sight on 

 the instant. She was gone nearly a minute then she reappeared 

 and began filling up the hole, scratching the sand in, in the same 

 manner that she digs it out. She stopped every few minutes 

 however to pack the sand down with rapid hammer strokes of 

 her abdomen. (Fig. 8.) The task was completed in about three 

 minutes, the surface of the sand showing no indications of the 

 whereabouts of the spider. 



I then dug the spider out. The wasp had packed the sand in 

 so well that one could see no demarcation between the recently 



