170 THE SOLITARY WASPS. 



defended her booty against two hunting parties of ants which, 

 at different times, fell upon it 'and would certainly have carried 

 it off if we had not been at hand. 



It took the wasp twenty minutes to open the burrow, al- 

 though, as we afterward learned, it had been excavated before. 

 At the end of that time she turned around inside, came out head 

 first, and dragged the cricket within. 



We at once opened the nest but found it impossible to fol- 

 low the tunnel on, account of the crumbling of the earth. In- 

 deed we almost concluded that we were doomed to complete 

 failure for it was not until we had gone down between six and 

 seven inches that we found, in a little pocket, our wasp in com- 

 pany with three crickets upon one of which was a larva a day 

 or two old. At the time we knew nothing of the habits of 

 Bembex spinolae and we were much astonished to find a wasp 

 which evidently fed her young from day to day. 



The contents of the nest were carefully conveyed to our 

 wasp-nursery at the cottage. The cricket that we had seen 

 taken in was dead as was also the one upon which the larva 

 was feeding. The third one was alive as was shown by a 

 rhythmic movement of the palpi on the right side. By the 

 next day, however, this one also was dead. 



On the morning of the third day, July thirty-first, the larva 

 had eaten all of the first cricket and the greater part of one of 

 the others, leaving only the large hind legs. Supplying the 

 place of the mother we killed two more and put them into the 

 tube. One of these was eight millimeters long, this being 

 about the size of those which the wasp herself had caught, while 

 the other was of another species and much larger, being thirty 

 millimeters long. Its size and kind however made no difference 

 to the larva, which attacked this one next although there were 

 two small ones yet untouched. It ate only half of this big one, 

 however, and then passed on. On August second we gave it 

 two more small crickets and for that day and the one following 

 its good appetite continued, but on August fourth it stopped 

 eating. We thought that its larval life must be completed, and 



