BEES, WASPS, ANTS, ETC. 



631 



Fig. 657. — Sphecius speciosus. 



never known it to capture other food for its young than this cicada. Its burrow is 

 dug in the light, dry soil of unfrequented paths. It is two feet or more in depth, ex- 

 tending obliquely downwards, and turning up- 

 wards at the end, and is three fourths of an 

 inch in diameter. The earth from the burrow 

 is heaped up near the entrance. In carrying its 

 prey to the nest, the wasp ingeniously takes ad- 

 vantage of the wind, dragging the cicada up 

 some tall tree and sailing off before a favoring 

 breeze. A single cicada is sufficient provision 

 for a single nest, and the great labor of excava- 

 tion is done again and again before the supply 

 of eggs of a single female becomes exhausted. 

 The genus Gorytes is remarkable in that it mimics one of the true wasps, Odynerus. 

 One of the European species of this genus carries off the larvse of Tettigonia, one of 

 the leaf-hoppers. The species of the typical genus, JVysson, have the habit, rare among 

 the wasps, of feigning death and dropping to the ground when alarmed. 



In the sub-family Philanthinae the head is wider than the thorax, the inter- 

 mediate tibiae are armed with a single spur at tip, and the anterior tarsi are strongly 

 ciliated. The males are peculiar in having a fringe of hairs resembling a moustache 

 on the apical margin of the lateral lobes of the clypeus. The habits in this group 

 are quite unifoi-m and resemble those of other burrowers. The species are small, and 

 their tortuous excavations seldom exceed a depth of five inches. The East Indian 

 and South American species, however, are exceptions, and some of the species of 

 Cerceris from tropical regions reach a length of one inch. Philan^ 

 thus triangulicm stores its nest with the common honey bee, Apis 

 mellifica, and also with wild bees of the genera Andrena and Halictus. 

 The genus Cerceris contains some of the most beautiful species among 

 the fossorial Hymenoptera, and exhibits great diversity in the insects 

 upon which its species prey. Cerceris arenaria stores up beetles of 

 the family Curculionidse, Strophosomus, Balaninus and Otiorhynchits 

 having been collected, in ,its burrows. The bees of the genus Halictus are favorite 

 food for several species of this genus. A single female of Cerceris Ivpresticida will 

 often place as many as fifteen beetles of the genus Biiprestis in a single excavation. 



With the sub-family Pemphredonhise the fore wing has two complete submarginal 

 cells. The species are of small size, with large head and ovate-lanceolate abdomen, 

 mounted on a slightly curved petiole. Pemphredon lugubris is nn extremely common 

 English species. The female burrows into decaying posts, rails, and logs, and pro- 

 visions her cells with different species of aphides. She will settle on a rose leaf, for 

 example, and scrape a number of the plant lice together into a ball, flying off with it, 

 carrying it with her front legs just under her head. Pemphredon mimctus, however, 

 makes its burrow in sand, while at least one species of the allied genus Stigmus (S. 

 troglodytes, by some authors placed in the genus Celia.) makes its cells in the hollow 

 straws of thatched roofs, provisioning them with masses of the larvae of Thri2?s. 



The sub-family Crabroninaj is a large and interesting group, exhibiting considerable 

 diversity of habit and form. The head is frequently very large. The abdomen is 

 oval or elliptical, sometimes clavate and sometimes petiolated. The eyes are ovate 

 and sometimes reniform. The fore wings have but a single submarginal cell, and the: 



Fig. 658. — Philaii 

 thus ventUabris. 



