Ecological and Behavior Notes 7 



on August 16. One female was feasting upon the remains 

 of a watermelon left on the river bank by some picnicers. 

 One specimen was taken on the bald field of the baseball 

 diamond in a city lot on September 17. 



Dasymutilla occidentalis Linn. [S. A. Rohwer]. These 

 Mutillids were becoming quite abundant on the stubble 

 field at Wickes by September 4. They occupied the same 

 area as Bruesia bexar and D. zella, and spent their time 

 in walking slowly about and entering holes and crevices 

 indiscriminately. At Wesco, Mo., about the first of 

 August, I saw on two separate mornings, a dozen or so 

 males flying about one certain hawthorn shrub which 

 was less than two feet high. These shrubs were plentiful 

 thereabouts, but no others attracted these insects. I sus- 

 pected at once that this was a courtship flight, and that 

 the wingless females were lurking somewhere unseen, but 

 careful and continued watching led me to conclude that 

 this was only play. Or we might borrow a suggestion 

 from the ways of some other species of wasps, and sus- 

 pect that these males had emerged prior to the females, 

 and that they were here around the burrow of a female, 

 which they could by some sense incomprehensible to us 

 detect, awaiting her emergence. 



TimuUa hexagona Say. [S. A. Rohwer]. This velvet 

 ant was found walking about on the short grass sur- 

 rounding the baseball diamond in the city in early 

 August. 



Sphaerophthalma pennsylvanica Lep. [S. A. Rohwer]. 

 On June 15 a female was taken, after having been ob- 

 served for some time poking its head under loose lumps 

 of earth and tufts of grass on a broken area. 



Sphaerophthahna scaeva Blake. [S. A. Rohwer]. We 

 have never caught S. scaeva in the field busy with any 

 significant occupation. We have seen them only in the 

 autumn; on September 12 a male was walking about on 

 the top of a high bluff at Falling Springs, 111., and on 

 September 23 and October 7 they were flying slowly about 



