366 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Lours 
served as a floor and no grass was needed. Three inches 
above this pith floor was a plug of grass, an inch long 
and tightly packed ag usual. No pupa of the grass- 
carrying wasp was found, but at the bottom of the 
chamber were four pup of Diptera. 
I have not been able until now to find just what this 
creature preys upon. Other members of this genus 
gather Orthoptera for their young; and my suspicions 
in this matter were confirmed when I found in one of 
the sumac stems, along with particles of grass, a half- 
dozen wings of a tree-cricket. These were submitted 
for identification to Mr. A. N. Caudell, who writes: 
‘‘The wings are those of some species of the gryllid 
genus Oecanthus. All appear to be of the same species. 
O. quadripunctatus Beutenm. is a very common form, 
and these wings show no detail at variance with those 
of that species.’’ 
The next season, after prolonged searching, I finally 
caught the wasp red-handed with Orthoptera of three 
distinct species, and learned some details of her method 
of handling them. It was in early September, 1919, that 
one was seen carrying a green cricket to her nest. She 
carried it easily under her abdomen, and was trying to 
gain entrance to her burrow in the wooden porch. 
My presence frightened her, and she flew to a bush 
nearby and disappeared among the foliage. Some ten 
minutes later I saw her come out, still clinging to 
her cricket; then she was captured, robbed of her cricket 
‘and Hhorateck A half-hour later she reappeared with 
a second one of the same species. To all appearances 
the cricket was dead, but when examined two days later 
it was found to have emitted large quantities of excre- 
ment, and with a magnifying glass I could see a move- 
ment of the palpi. No other part of the body responded 
