138 
was able to circumvent this difficulty by first capturing a rather 
heavy young cricket and carefully throwing it down before a 
wasp on the hunt; the dazed cricket was immediately seized and 
stung and borne laboriously homewards. 
The nest-holes are usually deep—often a foot or so; sometimes 
they are dug by the wasp, or they may be ready-made affairs, as, 
for example, Cicada emergence holes, and holes occupied by her 
larger relative, Liris aurata. The wasp is much pestered by ants, 
and a little Tachina fly is also an enemy to her young. This fly 
locating a Notogonidea burrow will sit patiently by it, like a heron 
stalking her prey, watch the proprietress enter with her prize 
and fly away in search of another, thus leaving the dipteron free 
to enter the burrow, which she does immediately, to emerge 
therefrom in half a minute or so; during this short interval she 
has undoubtedly deposited her own young on or near the para- 
lyzed cricket. Thus the fly maggots will shortly consume the 
wasp's egg and the food supplied. 
The wasp is rather a tame insect and she will frequently nest 
in the well-prepared flower pots placed under the shelter of 
sheds ; one utilized one of these soil-filled pots placed in the insec- 
tary. In digging she bit off soil and pushed it past her with the 
legs, and when deeper in the burrow backed up with the load 
carried between head and forelegs. I first observed her (a speci- 
men with the hind femora reddish) on September 9; in a few 
days she had excavated several holes in the pot, which I took 
back with me to Hawaii, where in October and November it 
yielded me a dozen wasps and one spoilt cocoon. Some of the 
wasps had the legs all dark and some had the hind femora red. 
Dutt (1912) speaks of N. tesselata in India, diggmng after 
crickets. I never saw this happen in the Philippine species, 
though it it probable that some dig for their prey, as several 
species have elongate bodies and stouter legs well fitted for dig- 
ging, thus approaching the genus Larra, which seeks its victims 
underground. 
Lirts aurata Fabricius. 
Length 20 mm.; black, with golden pile on head and thorax; 
legs largely brown, wings with purple iridescence 
This is a rather stout, handsome wasp somewhat less than an 
inch long, and endowed with a low, swift flight. She is not un- 
common in cultivated areas, where one may see her along paths 
or feeding in the sweet-potato plots. Or she may be engaged in 
hunting crickets in a plowed field, and being a powe erful insect, 
readily subdues her prey 
