CHAPTER. Iii. 
BIOLOGICAL MISCELLANY. 
Te 
Recent observations extend our knowledge of the Hymenoptera that 
store spiders in the maternal nest. Mr. William J. Fox has published a list! 
of five species belonging to the one family of Pompillide. These 
are Pompillus Authiops Cresson, P. biguttatus Fabr, P. margin- 
atus Say, Prioenemis pompilius Cresson, and P. germanus Cresson. 
The first named species was taken in the act of capturing a large Lycosid ; 
the second while carrying a small silvery spider, apparently a young Argiope 
argyraspis. It is probable that all of this family prey upon spiders, a fact 
which vastly enlarges the number of hymenopterous enemies which wage 
warfare upon the order Arane, It is so much the fashion to look upon 
spiders with disfavor, as a cunning, fierce, and relentless enemy of insects, 
to whom our sympathy rather goes forth, that we are apt to forget that 
poor Arachne is herself the victim of a remorseless fierceness and cunning 
on the part of insect families which far exceeds her own. 
Mr. Francis R. Welsh has fayored me with a vivid description of the 
manner in which the arachnophagous wasps pursue their prey. The pur- 
suer in this case was a black wasp whose name was not known, and the 
spider was Agalena nevia. Agalena’s web was spun about four inches 
above the ground among plants and was of the usual form, that 
Spider 
Enemies. 
rack is, a horizontal sheet pierced by a tube, and having numerous 
ursui ; ae : 
of Spider stay lines rising several inches above the sh@eted floor. For 
fully fifteen minutes the wasp pursued the spider under and over 
the leaves and web. On a straight dash the former was quicker in movye- 
ment, but the latter beat her whenever the conditions would not permit 
her to fly, though she also ran surprisingly fast. At the end of the first 
round the spider escaped from the web unseen, and hid among some plants 
and stones about three feet away. The wasp beat about the web for a few 
minutes, and thence passed to some neighboring webs, and finally traversed 
the ground near the original web until she flushed her quarry. The observer 
thought that the spider bolted before the wasp saw it, but the pursuer 
must have been very close at the time. Agalena got safely back to its 
web, and the second round began and lasted about ten minutes, when it 
1 Entomological News, Vol. I., page 145. 
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