42 INSECT ARTIZANS AND THEIR WORK 



miners excavate with their fore feet, which are 

 strongly built and furnished with a fringe of stiff 

 bristles ; they work with wonderful rapidity, and 

 the sand thrown out beneath their bodies issues 

 in continuous streams. They are solitary wasps, 

 each female working on her own account. After 

 making a gallery two or three inches in length, in a 

 slanting direction from the surface, the owner 

 backs out and takes a few turns round the orifice 

 apparently to see if it is well made, but in reality, 

 I believe, to take note of the locality, that she may 

 find it again. This done, the busy workwoman 

 flies away ; but returns, after an absence varying 

 in different cases from a few minutes to an hour 

 or more, with a fly in her grasp, with which she 

 re-enters her mine. On again emerging, the 

 entrance is carefully closed with sand. During this 

 interval she has laid an egg on the body of the fly, 

 which she had previously benumbed with her sting, 

 and which is to serve as food for the soft, footless 

 grub soon to be hatched from the egg. From what 

 I could make out, the Bembex makes a fresh excava- 

 tion for every egg to be deposited ; at least, in two 

 or three of the galleries which I opened there was 

 only one fly enclosed." 



Although a solitary wasp, Bembex, like Philan- 

 thus and Sphex, likes to have neighbours, and so 

 we find a number of them occupying a small plot 

 of ground, but each " pegging out her own claim " 

 in that restricted mining region. Yet, though they 

 appear to like neighbours, they are not what could 



