110 THE SOLITARY WASPS. 



out and heaped up, probably on the preceding day, and in the 

 midst of this a little hole had been opened since we passed be- 

 fore. The place looked so promising that we sat down to watch 

 it, and a few minutes later we were rewarded by a glimpse of 

 some antennae down the gallery, and then a little face with yel- 

 low markings appeared but quickly vanished. Now followed a 

 very coquettish performance. The wasp came slowly creeping 

 up again and again only to drop out of sight as soon as she had 

 reached the opening. After a time she grew bolder and sat in 

 her doorway, twitching her head this way and that in a very 

 expressive manner as though she were planning the work of the 

 day, but it was plain that although she was up early, business 

 cares were not weighing heavily upon her mind, for forty min- 

 utes passed before she came out of the nest, and after making 

 three or four circles about the spot, flew away. 



How much livelier an'l more interesting it would have been 

 if we could have followed her! We tried to guess at what she 

 was doing, and imagined her hunting industriously. After 

 fifteen or twenty minutes it seemed to us that she must have 

 caught something and that she was surely returning. Most 

 probably she was not working at all, but was breakfasting lei- 

 surely and exchanging compliments with her neighbors, for 

 when she did come home after keeping us waiting for an hour 

 and a, half, she brought nothing with her and seemed quite un- 

 conscious of the fact that greater things had been expected of 

 her. 



We had placed a stone upon a dead leaf near by, to mark the 

 neighborhood of the nest, thinking that even a Cerceris could 

 not object to so simple an arrangement of natural objects, but 

 our wasp noticed it at once, and evidently with much suspicion 

 and disapproval. She began by circling several times just 

 above it. Then she alighted on it and examined it carefully, 

 walking over it and creeping underneath, perhaps to see whether 

 it in any way menaced the safety of her nest, perhaps as the 

 completion of a locality study made the day before. She then 



