252 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [June, ’12 
its elongate egg so that its progeny would have every advantage 
of developing successfully in being supplied with the freshest 
food. The following quotation from the Cambridge Natural 
History, VI, Insects, pt. 2, p. 75, relates to Fabre’s observa- 
tions on Odynerus reniformis and shows the remarkable in- 
stinct of the insect in safeguarding its egg: “This insect pro- 
visions its cells with small caterpillars to the number of twenty 
or upwards. The egg is deposited before the nest is stocked 
with food; it is suspended in such a manner that the suspen- 
sory thread allows the egg to reach well down towards the bot- 
tom of the cell.” By this arrangement there is no danger of the 
egg being crushed in the mass of caterpillars which may not 
be completely deprived of motion, which Fabre states is the 
case in a related genus (Eumenes). 
At 10 A. M. we dug out the burrow made by W. This wasp 
was much the faster worker. Fig. 5, Pl. XIV, shows its tube 
which was I I-30 inch tall. We had already filled the cell with 
nine larvae and had oviposited some time previously, as shown 
by the small wasp grub within. Some of the imprisoned larvae 
were capable of considerable activity. The cell was closed with 
a wad of packed soil 1-5 inch thick. 
It is possible that these two O. annulatus would have added 
other cells to their burrows, inasmuch as one such branched 
hole was located in Scott County. It stands to reason, how- 
ever, that Odynerus annulatus must store several cells, and lay 
more than one egg to be able to propagate its species. 
A closely related species, O. geminus Cress, to which we shall 
now refer, makes a several-celled tunnel but does not construct 
a tube to the aperture. Sharp, in the Cambridge Natural His- 
tory VI, Insects, p. 74, in speaking of Odynerus mentions the 
fact that several species of the sub-genus Hoplopus “have the 
remarkable habit of constructing burrows in sandy ground and 
forming at their entry a curvate, freely projecting tube, placed 
at right angles to the main burrow, and formed of the grains 
of sand brought out by the insect during excavation and ce- 
mented together.” In several localities we noticed on rare oc- 
casions much narrower clay tubes than those of Odynerus an- 
