44 
Some Solitary Wasps of Texas. 
leisurely behavior on the third and fourth days of the nest, when 
she digs spasmodically or even visits the nest without working at 
all. 
After the long and slender egg (six mm. in length) has hatched, 
the larva is kept well supplied with flies. These belong to any of the 
common species in the woods, Musca domestica, Calliphora vomito- 
ria and especially the large VoluceUa escurieus , Fair. var. Mexicana , 
Macq. She does not confine herself to a single species of fly as does 
Thy reopus argus , which preys on a species of Dolichopus. The size 
of the fly is not graduated to the size of the larva, as is said to be 
the case with Bembex, but it appears that the first fly met with, large 
or small, is captured and brought home. The wasp carries the fly 
with her middle pair of legs and on entering passes it deftly back 
to the last pair. This habit seems to be characteristic of the Bem- 
becids in general. 
The larva is fed for at least eleven days ; I observed one individual 
continue this from Aug. 17th to Aug. 28th. During this time, 
twenty-four or more flies had been brought in, since, when I dug 
up the nest,. I found the large larva, (which spun its cocoon the 
next day) surrounded by the remains of empty dipterous skeletons : 
24 heads, 11 thoraces, 8 abdomens and many wings, the hardest 
parts of the different species of flies having been left. Fig 15 rep- 
resents a pupa surrounded by the remains of flies in the sand. 
M. Carolina shows a remarkable variation in habit in that she 
sometimes closes her nest before she flies away, sometimes leaves it 
open and this applies to some individuals as well as to the species as 
a whole. Of the eleven specimens that I observed, six closed the nest 
carefully each time they left it; two always left theirs open; two 
closed theirs once or twice in a slip-shod manner leaving it open at 
all other times ; and one closed hers carefully until she begun to car- 
ry in flies, when it was never again closed until the larva was full 
growiy 
Each individual performs the final closure with; scrupulous care, 
the whole tunnel being filled with sand and the surface smoothed 
over in the radius of a foot. One wasp kept returning to the nest 
occasionally for several days to throw more sand over the entrance 
to her old nest until she had kicked up a pile of sand three inches 
deep. 
Monedula 3 s nest is the largest digger-wasp nest I know. The 
entrance, seen from above, has the form of an arch which measures 
about an inch across the base and three-fourths of an inch in height. 
Fig. 7 shows the wasp just crawling forth from her nest. The nest 
