117 

ingestion. At first it feeds externally—that is, with its head 
pressed against the roach’s body, so the latter suffers little injury 
—but the grub grows rapidly, both in size and appetite, and 
inserts its head and a portion of the thorax into its victim’s 
body and quickly sucks out the life juices. The roach is soon 
reduced to a mere shell, which the grub also devours. The dirty 
white larva now spins its cocoon (Fig. 56), a tough and non- 
flexible affair, lined inwardly with silk, outwardly covered with 
grains of earth, etc., and terminating in a curious ribbed structure 
which the grub spins through the anterior end of the cocoon 
proper. The wasp in emerging from the cocoon bites out an 
irregular hole near the anterior extremity. 
As an adult Dolichurus has a long season and in consequence 
several generations yearly; it was found from March to Sep- 
tember, and was very plentiful in May, June and July. It is 
now established on the Island of Oahu, Hawaiian Is., from speci- 
mens shipped in from Los Banos in 1917. It spread rapidly, and 
very soon made its appearance in the moist mountain forests of 
the island. On January 7, 1919, I saw several specimens along a 
roadside at an altitude of about 450 feet, and approximately 12 
miles (airline) northwest of its point of liberation back of Ho- 
nolulu. 
The genus Dolichurus seems best represented in the Old World 
tropics; they are rare in Europe and also in America; there seems 
to be only one representative in temperate North America. 
Ferton (1894) has studied the habits of D. haemorrhous Costa 
near Marseilles, France. It captures a roach (Loboptera deci- 
piens), which it buries in a hole 7-8 cm. deep. The egg, which 
is 14% mm. long, is glued to one of the middle coxae; it 
hatches in 3-4 days, the larval feeding stage is about eight days, 
and the insect passes the winter in the cocoon, which, by the 
way, lacks the terminal hoop-like process of Dolichurus stantont. 
Turner (1917) speaks of Lefroy capturing the Indian D. gilberti 
Turner “preying on small Blattidae.” 
SPHECIDAE. 
Sphecinae. 
A large subfamily, for the most part consisting of good-sized 
wasps. Their habits are very diverse, for where one digs tun- 
nels far away from human habitations, another is the tame 
creature that plasters her mud cells against our walls and stuffs 
them with spiders. Like the swifts and swallows among birds, 
the Sceliphronini among wasps frequently take advantage of the 
works of man as a convenient nesting place. 
