SOME GRAVE DIGGERS. 123 



colonies, although that is rather too large a word to apply to 

 them, since one consisted of four nests and the other of only two. 

 When we came to excavate the nests of this species we were 

 greatly astonished at the length of the gallery, and not until 

 then did we properly appreciate the industry of these little wasps. 

 It is no small undertaking to follow one of their tunnels for 

 twenty-two inches, even when, as in this case, the greater part 

 of it is parallel to the surface of the ground. (PI. XL, fig. 2.) 

 We did not find distinct pockets, as the soil was very crumbly 

 and fell in as we worked, but we came upon clumps of bees an 

 inch or so to one side of the gallery and about three inches apart, 

 with larvae in different stages of development. In one nest we 

 found twenty-six bees in two clumps, some of them half -eaten 

 and some of them fresh, but all quite dead. We have no doubt 

 that punctatus completely provisions one pocket and closes the 

 opening from it into the gallery, before she starts another, mak- 

 ing a series of six or eight independent cells. The provision 

 for one larva is probably twelve or fourteen bees, the capture 

 of which, in good weather, would be a fair day's work. 



That the males do not always stay on in their ancestral home 

 is shown by an observation that we made on the only occasion 

 that we ever saw this species in our garden. Nothing was stir- 

 ring at half past three o'clock in the afternoon and we had given 

 up work and started for home, when, in going up an inclined 

 part of the field, we noticed something in motion within a ragged- 

 edged hole which ran obliquely into the ground. It seemed 

 strange that a wasp should be beginning its nest at so late an 

 hour, but a wasp it was, as we could plainly see when we took 

 an attitude sufficiently humble. It was loosening the earth with 

 its mandibles and then pushing it backward with its hind legs 

 and abdomen. We had scarcely settled down to watching it 

 when a second one of the same species appeared, and with a 

 good deal of fuss and flutter began to dig its hole close by. The 

 spot chosen by this second one proved unsatisfactory and another 

 beginning was made in a new place. Again something was 

 wrong, nor was a third choice any better. At last, however, the 

 work was started in earnest and might have been carried to a 



