Field Studies of the Non-Social Wasps 389 
duces the first adult, and so the family follows in order 
of actual age, and the pioneer down at the bottom of 
the tunnel works up through the mass of partitions, 
packing and relatives, to freedom, one sees the logic of 
this procedure and marvels at the fact of its possibility 
without injury to the tenants above, which we must re- 
member, are without the protection of a cocoon. For 
something which seems astonishing or illogical in the 
emergence of twig dwellers, one has only to look at Ody- 
nerus conformis, where the period of development of 
young in the same brood is so altered that the last 
egg deposited is the first to arrive at maturity and 
emerge, while the first egg deposited develops more 
slowly and this adult comes out last. It is at once ap- 
parent that the advantage of this latter arrangement is 
that the last insects will come out in good condition with- 
out exhausting themselves by breaking through more 
than their just allotment of partitions, or dying while 
waiting for their numerous bunkies above to clear the 
way. It is difficult to guess what can reverse or even 
make parallel the order of their development. The eggs 
are deposited in the cells at intervals, perhaps a day or 
two apart. They hatch into larvae, likewise, a day or two 
apart; in this quiet larval or prepupal stage they spend 
the winter, and when the time comes for transformation 
into pupae, one would expect the changes to occur a day 
or two apart in the same sequence, or if it did not occur 
in this way the most one could hope for would be simul- 
taneous changes; that is, since all in one nest have been 
subjected to the same conditions of climate, temperature, 
and presumably of food, all would begin simultaneously 
to constrict about the neck, to acquire legs, wing-pads and 
antennae simultaneously, the eyes would become pig- 
mented at the same time, ete. But our logic and expecta- 
