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MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 
NO. I—ACCOUNT OF A REMARKABLE SWARMING FOR 
BREEDING PURPOSES OF SPHEX UMBROSUS, CHRIST, 
WITH NOTES ON THE NESTS OF TWO OTHER SPECIES 
OF SPHEX AND OF CERTAIN OF THE POMPILIDA. 
All the species of wasps belonging to the genus Sphex, known to me, are 
eminently fossorial in their habits. Diggers of the earth, I have never found 
them taking advantage of odd holes in trees wherein to make their nests, as 
many of the Pompilide,a family also belonging to the Fossores, do. Nor 
does one ever see Sphea becoming a mason and building herself a mud nest as 
her near cousin Sceliphron does, Honest hard digging and delving and a nest 
in the warm earth are good enough for her, To those who have paid any 
heed to the ways of insects I need not say that it is only the female that does 
the work, The gentleman of the family takes no part in the house-building, 
In digging Sphes has much the action of a dog, scraping and scratching 
away with her powerfully spined forelegs and, when the loosened earth 
accumulates behind her, flicking it to a distance with a rapid kick or two of 
her long hindlegs. 
Up to last week I was under the impression that Sphew never bred in large 
companies. ‘I'wo or three nests excavated close together is the most I have 
found. However, one day last week Major Birch, R.A., Commanding the 
Mountain Battery stationed at Mandalay, told me that an extraordinary 
swarm of brilliantly metallic “ flies” had suddenly made an appearance near 
the Artillery Lines, and had commenced vigorously digging holes in the 
ground round the end of one of the barracks, 
It was late in the evening when I heard this, but, accompanied by Major 
Birch, I at once went off to inspect the swarm. I found that for about forty 
or fifty yards round the west end of the barrack the ground had been literally 
riddled with holes, It was getting dark and the insects had evidently retired 
for the night, possibly into their nest holes, but I caught a glimpse of two 
belated individuals and recognised them as unmistakeably Sphex of some kind, 
Next morning having a lot of office work I was unable to go collecting, but 
Major Birch was good enough to catch and send me over a botileful of the 
insects, They were all females of one species and, as I had half guessed from 
the glimpse I had had the night before, belonged to a variety of the widely- 
spread Sphex umbrosus, Christ. They differed, however, from all varieties of 
that insect that I have seen in a few particulars, Resembling Sphex umbrosus. 
var. argentifrons, Lepel.,in having the base and apex of the wings stained 
with dark fuscous, unlike that variety, these had, instead of all black legs, 
the basal three-fourths of the tibie and the whole of the femora of the 
intermediate and posterior legs blood red, 
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