42 
SANTAREM. 
Chap. I. 
with small spiders of the genus Gastracantha, in the 
usual half-dead state to which the mother wasps 
reduce the insects which are to serve as food for their 
progeny. 
Besides the Pelopseus there were three or four kinds 
of Trypoxylon, a genus also found in Europe, and 
which some Naturalists have supposed to be parasitic, 
because the legs are not furnished with the usual row 
of strong bristles for digging, characteristic of the family 
to which it belongs. The species of Trypoxylon, however, 
are all building wasps ; two of them which I observed 
(T. albitarse and an undescribed species) provision 
their nests with spiders, a third (T. aurifrons) with 
small caterpillars. Their habits are similar to those of 
the Pelopgeus ; namely, they carry off the clay in their 
mandibles, and have a different song when they hasten 
away with the burthen, to that which they sing whilst 
at work. Trypoxylon albitarse, which is a large black 
kind, three-quarters of an inch in length, makes a tre- 
m^dous fuss whilst building its cell. It often chooses 
the walls or doors of chambers for this purpose, and when 
two or three are at work in the same place their loud 
Cells of Trypoxylon aurifrons. little UOSt shapod like a 
humming keeps the house 
in an uproar. The cell is 
a tubular structure about 
three inches in length. T. 
aurifrons, a much smaller 
species, makes a neat 
carafe ; building rows of 
them together in the corners of verandahs. 
