DOOR-STEP NEIGHBORS 77 



and suggestive interval, followed the emergence 

 of the wasp, and the prompt filling in of the requi- 

 site earth to level the cavity, much as already 

 described, after which the wasp took wing and 

 disappeared, presumably bent upon a repetition 

 of the performance elsewhere. But she had not 

 simply buried this caterpillar victim, nor was the 

 caterpillar dead, for these wasp cemeteries are, in 

 truth, living tombs, whose apparently dead inmates 

 are simply sleeping, narcotized by the venom of 

 the wasp sting, and thus designed to afford fresh 

 living food for the young wasp grub, into whose 

 voracious care they are committed. 



By inserting my knife-blade deep into the soil 

 in the neighborhood of this burrow I readily un- 

 earthed the buried caterpillar, and disclosed the 

 ominous egg of the wasp firmly imbedded in its 

 body. The hungry larva which hatches from this 

 egg soon reaches maturity upon the all-sufficient 

 food thus stored, and before many weeks is trans- 

 formed to the full-fledged, long-waisted wasp like 

 its parent 



The disproportion in the sizes of the predatory 

 wasps and their insect prey is indeed astonishing. 

 The great sand -hornet selects for its most fre- 

 quent victim the buzzing cicada, or harvest-fly, an 

 insect much larger than itself, and which it carries 



