122 
bulk and ornamentation. One such large nest kept the architect 
employed for over a month. 
Sceliphron works rapidly, fetching rather large pellets of mud 
in her mandibles ; she places one on the nest and quickly stretches 
it downwards a little, and works briefly over it, up and down, 
emitting the while a squeaky buzz. 
Building operations were observed from March till August, 
LOL: 
Sceliphron deformis (Smith). 
Length 19 mm.; black, with yellow bands on thorax and 
abdomen. 
This is the most domestic of the Philippine Sceliphronini, but 
at the same time a common forest wasp. This species more 
than the other kinds observed is fond of concealing her several- 
celled clay nest (Fig. 59), and thus when building in bamboo 
houses she will select a dark and hid- 
den place therein, as behind a book 
case, or more commonly will enter 
the bamboo wall poles at their inter- 
section with the bamboo laths, and 
there emit her speaky buzz as she 
manipulates a imud pellet... Inj “the 
forest her cells are not infrequently 
plastered flat pe some sheltered 
bank. The cells (Fig. 59) taper in 
saa, eat _ characteristic fashion at the posterior 
: ae Se aN Bee extremity and are finally daubed over 
hatched: Netiralmere, with a protecting layer of mud. 
In hunting for her spider prey the 
wasp runs very rapidly along the branches of trees, flying from 
one to another in her quest. 

The very open houses of the tropics do not exclude wasp para- 
sites, and so we find several of these which attack the cells of 
our Sceliphron deformis. One is a small muscoid fly, another a 
golden bombylid or bee-fly, while a third 1s a black and white 
cryptid wasp whose grub spins a delicate white cocoon in the 
usurped cell. A steel-grey spider wasp (Pseudagenia) often ap- 
propriates cells in a Sceliphron nest, subdividing these with mud 
to suit her needs; thus one cell is converted into two or three 
Pseudagenia chambers, into each of which is stored a delegged 
spider. 
My notes on this wasp are from June to August, 1917. 
