Field Studies of the Non-Social Wasps 425 
rested at the opening with most of her body protruding, 
until the male could hurry down and join her, when mat- 
ing occurred as both went inside. The behavior of the 
female was certainly a most deliberate case of deport- 
ment. Had she followed and chased him, or had she ig- 
nored him and carried in her spider, one could have 
called it blind instinct; but the fact that she looked him 
up and then paused and waited for him almost classifies 
the deed among deliberate acts. 
The Peckhams tell us that the male in charge will 
chase away other males that attempt to enter the nest, 
but never objects to strange females entering, and that 
the females have no scruples against admitting strange 
males paying a visit to the burrow. I can go the Peck- 
hams one better, with the story of a flying couple that 
eluded both of their respective partners and mated on 
the bank very near to the hole where the rightful hus- 
band was on watch, and even came unhesitatingly into 
his presence. When the female had gone into the nest 
and the resident male was again stationed in the door- 
way, the impostor still lingered for a few moments danc- 
ing and hovering before his very eyes without eliciting 
from him the slightest response. There again we find in- 
dividual digression from the customary path of behavior. 
Most of the 7. albopilosum occupied horizontal bee 
burrows in the face of the bank, One, however, had a 
vertical nest on the flat top of the bank. She was ac- 
tively clearing out the abandoned nest of Entechnia 
taurea, and was actually carrying out in her jaws large 
clods of dirt which had fallen into this vertical burrow. 
T could not tell whether she was enlarging the hole by bit- 
ing out lumps, or only removing the loose pieces. She 
would go down into the hole head-first and back out with 
a pellet, sometimes depositing it near the hole, some- 
