3o8 The Hjinting JVasps 



carried in a dark box, each insect enclosed in its 

 paper bag. The starting-point selected is the 

 nearest town, Carpentras, which lies at about 

 two miles from the burrow. I am to release my 

 insects not among the fields, as on the first 

 occasion, but absolutely in the street, in the 

 centre of a crowded neighbourhood, where the 

 Cerceres, with their rustic habits, had certainly 

 never penetrated. As the day is already far 

 advanced, I postpone the experiments ; and my 

 captives spend the night in their prison-cells. 



Next morning, at about eight, I mark them 

 on the thorax with two white spots, to dis- 

 tinguish them from yesterday's lot, who were 

 marked with only one ; and I set them free, one 

 after the other, in the middle of the street. Each 

 Cerceris released first shoots straight up between 

 the two rows of houses, as though to escape as 

 soon as possible from the narrow street and gain 

 the spacious horizons ; then, rising above the 

 roofs, she at once darts away vigorously towards 

 the south. And it was from the south that I 

 brought them ; it is in the south that their 

 burrows are. Nine times, with nine prisoners, 

 freed one after the other, I had this striking in- 

 stance of the way in which the insect stranded 

 far from home takes without hesitation the right 

 direction for returning to the nest. 



I myself was at the burrows a few hours later. 



