THE BURROWING WASP. 



401 



very long and spider-like, enabling their owners to run about among grass with great vivacity, 

 their wings quivering all the while with violent agitation. Some of the species are in the 

 habit of catching spiders, and provisioning the burrows with them. It is worthy of notice 

 that the largest specimens of Hymenoptera are to be found in exotic insects belonging to this 

 family, the genus Pepsis being most remarkable for the great dimensions of its members. 



The right-hand figure represents an insect which is common in Southern Europe. JuaVino- 

 by the habits of those species which have been studied, the whole of the family to which it 

 belongs are sand-burrowers, and seem to be cruelly predaceous, mastering insects of consider- 

 able size, and dragging them into their burrows. One of these insects {Scolia Mcincta) has* 

 been known to capture and inter a large locust, the tunnel being some eighteen inches in depth 

 and very wide at the mouth. 



Monedula signata. 



Pompihis ntibihix. 



Scdlia pratorum. 



A formidable but useful insect is the CMorion lobaium, which wages fierce war against 

 cockroaches, those pests of American and Oriental houses, and its services are fully appre- 

 ciated by the natives, none of whom would kill one of these insects on any account, or permit 

 any one to injure it. With the slaughtered cockroaches it stocks its nest as a provision for, 

 the young when they escape from the egg. These insects are tolerably numerous, and are all 

 remarkable for the bright and yet deep purple and green of their bodies, and sometimes of 

 their wings. 



Our next subject is the Large-headed Mutilla. It is a curious, wingless insect, with 

 head disproportionately large, when the size of its body is taken into consideration. This is 

 an example of a family where the females, although armed with a powerful sting, are quite 

 destitute of wings. Most of the Mutillidfe are exotic, requiring a large amount of heat to 

 preserve them in health, only a very few being natives of Northern America and Europe. In 

 some of the larger species the sting is fearfully poisonous, a single insect having been known 

 to make a man so seriously ill that he lost his senses a few minutes after being stung, and his 

 life was despaired of for some time. A child has been known to die from the effects of the 

 sting inflicted by the Scarlet Mutilla of North America, an insect whose weapon is as long as 

 the abdomen. All these insects appear to be sand -borers. 



We now come to the "Wasps, in which the wings are folded throughout their entire length 

 when at rest. A wasp distinguished through the slenderness of the middle part of its body is 

 a native of Australia. It belongs to the Solitary Wasps, many of which are found in Europe. 

 The curious nest of this insect is formed like a globe. The creature makes a separate nest for 

 each egg, the material being clay well worked. The nest is stocked with the larvae of moths 

 or butterflies. 



To this family belongs that wonderful Burrowing Wasp, which is a builder as well as an 

 excavator, and which erects a tubular entrance, often more than an inch in height, with the 

 fragments of sand which it has dug from the tunnel. It is thought, and probably with cor- 

 rectness, that the object of the insect in making this edifice is to deter its parasitic foes from 



Vol. m.-51. 



