128 
By July 10 the colony had disappeared. Like other lowland 
forms, these wasps are greatly annoyed by ants, especially the 
ubiquitous Pheidolegiton, and this must partly account for the 
scarcity of the Chlorion. 
Ammobia mutica (Kohl) 
Length 29 mm.; black; wings iridescent purple 
During August and a part of September, 1917, several of these 
fine dusky wasps were observed digging their burrows in a flat 
area well shaded by sparse though wide-spreading vegetation. 
The burrow is at first vertical, or nearly so, to a depth of about 
three inches, when it extends horizontally for about two or three 
inches more, the terminal portion being somewhat enlarged to 
form a cell. In making this burrow the rather shy and fickle 
insect bites out the rich soil with her stout mandibles and also 
scrapes away the dirt with her well-fringed forefeet, the tarsi of 
which when so used are curved inward and upward, thus form- 
ing a sort of rake. 

Fig. G4. Ammobia mutica entering burrow with prey. About 
natural size. 
The wasp stores the cell with the young of various Locustidae 
or long-horned grasshoppers, upon the first one of which brought 
in she deposits an egg; this is pearly white, slender and curved, 
and about 7 mm. long, and transversely arranged on the locust’s 
breast between the first and second pair of legs. She is careful 
to close up her burrow after she stores each victim. From an 
examination of several burrows it is evident that the provender 
is often slow in coming and the wasp larva may be as much as 
half grown before the cell is completely stored. The wasp pro- 
vides her cell as time and weather permit, and, working as she 
does in the middle of the rainy season, heavy precipitation must 
often retard or even undo her labors. Several times I saw this 
Ammobia fetch a locust to her burrow. She would fly very easily 
with her prey, alight to deposit it on its venter or side a couple 
of inches before the closed burrow, and commence to open up 
the latter, and as the tunnel was stuffed with soil only for an 
