MINERS 45 



Smith says that Mellinus may at times be seen 

 apparently dead upon the cow-dung, but if you 

 watch her until a fly comes within reach she will 

 come to life at once and secure her unsuspecting prey. 

 Another gathering-place for flies is on the flat 

 clusters of umbelliferous flowers, such as wild 

 carrot, where they are busy licking up nectar and 

 eating pollen. Mellinus sabulosus takes advantage 

 of such resorts to get all the flies she wants for her 

 burrows. Capturing a fly, she stings it, and lays 

 it down before the mouth of her burrow whilst 

 she turns round in order to enter the burrow back- 

 wards with her prey. By taking advantage of the 

 opportunity thus afforded, Lucas secured stung 

 specimens of the flies, and found that they remained 

 alive, though powerless, for about six weeks. 



In the genus Cerceris the species exhibit a most 

 remarkable sense of the relationships of the insects 

 captured for the food of their young — a sense that 

 the classifying entomologist might envy. They do 

 not always restrict their selection to insects of one 

 species, as bees are said to restrict their honey- 

 gathering to one species of plant ; in such a restric- 

 tion they might be guided solely by form and 

 colour, but they gather species indifferently so 

 long as these are members of the same natural family. 



Thus, our own Cerceris arenaria confines its 

 operations to beetles of the weevil family — a vast 

 family whose species differ greatly in size and 

 colouring. She is not guided in her selection by 

 either of these things, though the colour sense in 



