“72 INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOUR 
habits of the solitary wasps have been described in a volume * 
worthy to be placed by the side of Fabre’s “Souvenirs.” Their 
descriptions seem to glow with the warm sunshine, and are 
redolent of the fresh air which afforded the conditions under 
which the observations were conducted. We can but regret 
that, in extracting from their bright pages some of the salient 
facts, the natural delicacy and grace of their treatment must 
be lost. For we can only give the dry skeleton which they 
have clothed with the flesh of lively detail. They enumerate 
the following primary modes of instinctive behaviour :— 
1. Stinging. 
2. Taking a particular kind of food. 
3. Method of attacking and capturing prey. 
4. Method of carrying prey. 
5. Preparing nest, and then capturing prey, or the 
reverse. ‘ 
6. The mode of taking prey into the nest. 
7. The general style and locality of the nest. 
8. The spinning or not spinning of a cocoon, and its 
specific form when one is made. 
When the young Pelopeus emerges from the pupa-case 
and gnaws its way out of the mud cell, with limp and flaccid 
wings, it responds to a touch by well-directed movements of 
the abdomen with thrusts of the sting, as perfect as those of 
the adult. There is clearly no opportunity here for either 
instruction or experience to afford any intelligent guidance. 
Stinging is an instinctive act. And it is an act of which great 
use is made in the capture of prey which shall serve for food 
to the young—it has a biological end. But the wasps of 
different species do not have to learn by experience what prey 
to attack. It is by instinct, too, that they take their proper 
food-supply, one caterpillars, another spiders, a third flies or 
beetles. So deeply seated, indeed, is the hereditary preference, 
that no fly-robber ever takes spiders, nor will the capturer of 
spiders change to caterpillars or beetles. Some keep to a few 
* “On the Habits and Instincts of the Solitary Wasps,” by George W. 
and Elizabeth G. Peckham (1898), 
