200 NATURE SKETCHES IN TEMPERATE AMERICA 



different species of grasshoppers in her nest. The species 

 included a male, slender cone-head, one common green meadow 

 grasshopper, and a female green grasshopper, Orchelimum 

 delicatum. Still another of these wasps made two nests in 

 succession near together. She commenced the first nest in 

 the late afternoon, and after storing five grasshoppers, she 

 closed it at 6 p.m. on the following day. The second nest was 

 started at six o'clock in the evening and finished two days later. 

 Into this nest she dragged four grasshoppers before she finally 

 closed it up completely two days later near five o'clock in 

 the afternoon. On excavating the two last-mentioned nests, 

 some interesting new facts came to light. 



The first burrow was made to go down at a slight angle 

 from the vertical, at the top cutting through the sod roots a 

 distance of an inch and a half, and then into the dry, sandy 

 earth. The length of the tube was six inches, and it ended in a 

 cavernous pocket. This was stored with a male and female 

 cone-head grasshopper, Conocephalus attenuatus. Just above 

 the bottom cavern, and separated from^ it by a partition, was 

 a second room in which were stored one female meadow grass- 

 hopper, Orchelimum vulgare, and two green cone-heads, Cono- 

 cephalus attenuatus. I next came upon a wholly unexpected 

 find in the lower pocket, as I lifted the grasshoppers out of 

 their confined quarters. Here were a surprising number, 

 something like thirty whitish grubs, which were about a quarter 

 of an inch in length. The grubs afterward thrived on the 

 decomposing grasshoppers. These fly larvae developed rapidly 

 until August twenty-third, when a large share of them were 

 transformed into pupse. In order to lay her eggs, the fly must 

 have gone into the open burrow of the wasp. This was probably 

 accomplished during the wasp's absence. 



The second nest was more slanting in its downward course. 

 It, too, was made up of two compartments at the bottom. 

 The length of the tube to the bottom of the lower room was six 

 and a quarter inches. Within the lower pocket were stored 

 a green male and a yellowish brown female of the green cone- 

 head grasshopper. In the second pocket above, the larder 

 comprised two males of the same species, one colored brown 

 and the other green. Only one wasp egg had evidently been 



