114 Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society Vol. XIV 
BOOK NOTES. 
Wasp Studies Afield. By Putt Rav and Netiie Rav. With 
an Introduction by WiLtLtiam M. WHEELER, Professor of Eco- . 
nomic Entomology, Harvard University. (Princeton Univer- 
sity Press, Princeton; London, Humphrey Milford; Oxford 
University Press. 1918.) One volume of 372 pp., with 68 
text figures. Price: $2.00. 
Before turning to a review of this charming and instructive book, I 
might, by way of introducing Mr. and Mrs. Rau to the entomological 
public at large, mention that the authors are of the small number who 
specialize in the habits of insects, and not, as most of us do, in one of the 
34 or 37 orders accepted by modern hexapodists. The series of their 
valuable contributions to ethology began in 1911 with a study of sexual 
selection in Cecropia-moths. During the next few years eighteen other 
papers dealing with the habits of insects were published, some of which 
are real monographs, such as the admirable “Biology of Stagmomantts 
carolina” (1913) and the “ Ecological Study on the Sleep of Insects” 
(1916). However, like so many of their predecessors in this field, they 
seem to have gradually felt “the lure of the wasp.” Nor should we be 
anything but grateful for it, since their interest in this aspect of insect- 
behavior has resulted in a handsome volume of over 350 pages, which 
faithfully records their “studies afield” of some 60 odd species of fos- 
sorial and folded-winged wasps. 
The opening chapter of the present volume, on “Some Bembicine 
Wasps,” contains, among other topics, a detailed and lively account of the 
nuptial sun-dance of Bembix nubilipennis (Cresson). Nuptial dances are 
executed by the males of many aculeate hymenoptera, especially bees 
(Andrena, Xylocopa and certain species of Bombus), and in one of his 
former papers (1916), Mr. Rau has described those of a sawfly. The per- 
formance is probably due to the prior emergence and early death of the 
males. An entire chapter is devoted to the Psammocharid or Pompilid 
wasps, the spider-hunters par excellence. Then follow accounts of some 
fly-catching wasps (genus Crabro in the broad sense), the enemies of 
plant lice (Pemphredonini), the bee-killing wasps (Philanthus), and cer- 
tain of the mud-daubers (Sceliphron and Chalybion). In the chapter 
dealing with wasps that prey upon beetles, there are a few notes on Scola 
dubia Say, though the authors have failed to clear up the mystery of the 
early stages of that species. Wood-boring wasps, treated in chapter VIII, 
belong to many unrelated groups of Sphecoidea: Cerceris, -Trypoxylon, 
Silaon. 
The two comprehensive chapters on the hunters of Orthoptera reveal 
many novel facts, some of which are worthy of mention even in a brief 
