356 Trans. Acad, Sci. of St. Lows 
In the living-room of the club-house this yellow-legged 
Pompilid was once seen crossing the floor with her 
spider. When I came too near she flew to the window, 
but presently she returned slowly and cautiously. Dur- 
ing her absence I examined the spider, a young Phidip- 
pus [J. H. Emerton] and found that it had only one leg, 
a front one; the other seven had been bitten off close 
to the body. Thus it seems that each individual P. mel- 
lipes trims the legs of her spiders exactly to suit her 
own fancy, and not in accordance with any law or fixed 
instinct. She left the spider lying on its back; when 
she returned she mounted it without changing its posi- 
tion, which made the ventral side of the spider rest 
against the ventral side of the wasp. Her body, and 
that of the spider, are about the same size, so she nicely 
_ covered it as she trundled it to a point some three feet 
away. Despite the length of her legs she was unable 
to lift it from the floor, so it rubbed against the rough 
boards until I thought surely it would get a splinter in 
its back. She stopped alongside a loose board and with- 
out leaving her spider or changing her position in the 
slightest degree, she paused and rested for a full half 
hour. Sometimes, while still in the same position, she 
would lift her hind legs and stroke her body with them 
= in toilet-making. The second half hour was drag- 
ging wearily on; her capacity for waiting seemed to 
exceed mine. I blew my breath gently but directly upon 
her; this immediately aroused the antenne to very wild 
movements, but soon her agitation cooled and she quieted 
them. This, however, did not induce her to move, 
but she became quite tame, so that I could approach 
her near enough to see that with her mandibles she held 
the abdominal tip of the spider as it lay beneath her. Suc- 
cessive blowings at length roused her to move on with 
