June, 1919 Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society 115 
review. The various Alyson, Tachysphex and Notogonidea content them- 
selves with small grasshoppers or crickets as prey; while the huge Prio- 
nonyx and Chlorion, the giants of the family, store away large-sized 
locusts and hoppers. A female Priononyx thome (Fabricius), having 
found a suitable grasshopper, paralyzes it with her sting, conceals it on 
the ground and then digs her burrow nearby. When the chamber has 
been prepared, the prey is dragged inside, an egg laid upon it, and the 
entrance hole carefully filled with soil. Often, while watching these 
manceuvres, the Raus saw a female Stizus unicinctus Say lurking in the 
vicinity or even entering the burrow where Priononyx. was at work. 
When the nest had been closed and the Priononyx hadi gone, the female 
Stizus was observed to open and enter the burrow, where she remained 
a short time, probably ovipositing; then she would come out and close 
the nest again. In such instances examination showed the Priononyx egg 
crushed on the body of the grasshopper. Though the egg of Stizus un- 
cinctus was not actually observed on the prey, from this and other obser- 
vations it is almost certain that this species is a cow-bird wasp, playing 
the part of a burglar; it uses the grasshopper captured by Priononyx 
thome and allied Fossores as food for its own young. 
Much has been written by Fabre, Ferton, Peckham and others on the 
habits of the sand-loving Ammophila. Yet, the subject is of such intense 
interest, that we read with renewed satisfaction the forty pages devoted 
by the Raus to the nesting of Sphex pictipennis (Walsh) and S. procera 
(Dahibom). Several species of this group have been found to use a tool, 
with which they pound the soil at the entrance to their closed nest. The 
Raus’ detailed description of the behavior of S. pictipennis records an 
almost rational succession of purposeful movements. If observed in a 
human being such movements would certainly be explained as intelligent 
acts. Why call them instinctive, merely because they are performed by an 
insect? Nor should Fabre’s statement that insects are mere machines. be 
taken for granted. Ferton, Roubaud and others have presented proof of 
the plasticity of insect behavior, and the Raus also cite many cases show- 
ing that wasps are not such “ sticklers for conventionality ” as Fabre tried 
to make us believe. 
The extensive notes on some social wasps will be especially welcome in 
this country, where so little has been done thus far on this subject. In- 
deed, our present knowledge of the behavior of social folded-winged 
wasps is to a very large extent based on the splendid work of @aijanet 
and P. Marchal in France, A. Ducke and R. von Ihering in South America, 
and E. Roubaud in West Africa. It is probable that this part of the Raus’ 
book will arouse some discussion, for in their experimental study of the 
homing of Polistes pallipes they have touched upon the problem of indi- 
vidual experience in insects. Due to their various experiments the authors 
discard Fabre’s “unknown power” and Bethe’s “additional sense of direc- 
tion” as well; they incline to the view that memory individually acquired 
sufficiently explains how Polistes finds its way back to its nest, a conclu- 
sion also arrived at by Lubbock in his experiments with honey-bees. 
