BuLrLER.—Insect Architecture. 947 
On the same subject, Captain Gilbert Mair has lately furnished me with 
the following notes :— 
‘In January, of the present year, a Mason-wasp commenced building its 
nest inside a small hut at Tauranga. It plastered it obliquely on the inner 
partition above a bedstead. When the door was closed, the Wasp made its 
ingress through a small hole in the window every few minutes, loaded with 
a little ball of damp mud which it carried in its feelers, all the time making 
aloud buzzing noise. It continued its building operations till the end of 
March, when the nest, which consisted of a single row of cells, had reached 
a length of sixteen inches. It was round on the outer surface, three- 
quarters of an inch in diameter, and marked with longitudinal stripes. It 
contained twenty separate cells, in each of which were a number of small 
brown spiders in a torpid state, and one or more of the Wasp’s eggs. Upon 
the completion of each cell, the Wasp flew to a paling-fence, over which it 
hovered in search of a victim, on capturing which it immediately pierced 
it in the back. It might then be seen proceeding, tail-first, in the direction 
of the house, tugging lustily a spider more than its own weight, which it 
would drag along the ground, up the side of the house, and through the 
aperture to its nest, in spite of every obstacle. Unfortunately, the nest was 
knocked down and broken into many piecez. The spiders were still alive, 
though they had been imprisoned for several months. I believe this insect 
to be indigenous to New Zealand, for I observed some capturing spiders in 
a similar manner in 1857, but they appeared larger, and were of a more 
brilliant black than the attenuated specimens now in the Museum." 
I feel no doubt myself that the species is indigenous, being quite 
familiar with it in this district, and having, I believe, met with it in the 
North more than twenty years ago. But, for some unexplained reason, it 
makes a sudden appearance in great. numbers at one season, and becomes 
scarce in the next, as though its occurrence were determined by fitful or 
irregular migrations from one part of the country to another. Major Mair, 
in writing to me only a few weeks ago, says he does not remember seeing 
many of them last summer, although they were so very abundant the year 
before. This summer, again, they are as numerous as ever in the Waikato. 
Fig. 2, Plate IIL, in the accompanying sketch, represents the outer 
surface of the Spider-wasp’s clay nest. 
