1 6 The Hunting Wasps 



who is common in the Landes, as her historian 

 tells us, appears to be very rarely found in the 

 department of Vaucluse. I have met her only 

 at long intervals, in autumn — and then only 

 isolated specimens — on the spiny heads of the 

 field eryngo [Eryngium campestre), in the neigh- 

 bourhood either of Avignon or of Orange and 

 Carpentras. In this last spot, so favourable to 

 the work of the Burrowing Wasps owing to its 

 sandy soil of Molasse formation, I have had the 

 good fortune, not to witness the exhumation of 

 such entomological treasures as Leon Dufour 

 describes, but to find some old nests which I 

 attribute without hesitation to the Buprestis- 

 huntress, basing my opinion upon the shape of 

 the cocoons, the nature of the provisioning, and 

 the presence of the Wasp in the neighbourhood. 

 These nests, dug in the heart of a very crumbly 

 sandstone, known in the district as sa/re, were 

 crammed with remains of Beetles, remains 

 easily recognized and consisting of detached 

 wing-cases, gutted, corselets and entire legs. 

 Now these broken victuals of the larva's banquet 

 all belonged to a single species ; and that species 

 was once more a Buprestis, the Double-lined 

 Buprestis (Sphenoptera geminata).^ Thus from 



' The Beetle known to Fabreas Sphenoptera geminata, Uliger, 

 is now considered identical with S. lineola^ Herbst, which was 

 known many years earlier. — Translator' s Note. 



