BEES AND WASPS AS MINERS. 



67 



of insect for its food supply. Some capture locusts 

 or grasshoppers, some cockroaches, some flies, others 

 caterpillars, and so forth. 



Species of wasps exist that make their homes in 

 the sand, others in hollow stalks of reeds and other 

 plants, and many that are glad 

 to take advantage of any old 

 hole or crevice they can find to 

 save themselves the labor of 

 making burrows. Mr. 

 H. P. Gosse tells of a 

 dauber wasp * that made 

 a nest of an empty ink 

 bottle; stored it with 

 spiders' and wasps' eggs, 

 and stopped up the neck 



with clay. "When this 

 was broken into and the 

 spiders overhauled, she 

 visited it, took out all 

 the spiders first put 

 there, replaced them 

 with others, and reclosed 

 the neck of the bottle. 



"Wasps of another 

 kind f have been known 

 to use the folds in a piece of paper, and "even of 

 the barrels of a double-barreled pistol hanging on 

 the post of a garden summer house." On one oc- 



• Pelopceus. 



f Odynerua. 



