48 
Some Solitary Wasps of Texas. 
While the wasp was gone on the second hunting trip, a large 
Mutilled again came along, scratching at a great many places, here 
and there. Thus also she removed the sand from the entrance of 
the wasp’s nest, though she did not enter, but merely looked in and 
passed on. 
At 11 :33 the wasp came back again with a large gray bug, alight- 
ing with it just in front of the entrance. I expected her to show some 
agitation at the disturbance made at her nest by the Mutilled; she 
appeared not to notice it, however, but holding the large bug with 
her middle pair of legs and balancing herself on her hind pair, 
she dug away some sand with her front pair. She then dropped 
the bug and crawled over it into the burrow. In a few moments 
she came up, head foremost, grasped the bug by an antenua with her 
mandible and drew him inside. In one and one-half minutes, she 
came out again, closed her nest carefully and flew away. 
During the afternoon belfragei came home without a bug. A 
wagon had just came along and unfortunately cut away several 
inches of the burrow. Such a widespread disturbance in front of the 
nest would drive an ordinary wasp out of her wits. But this level- 
headed bug-catcher seemed, in spite of it, to know just where her 
nest was located and went to work clearing away the sand that had 
caved in. As she progressed, more and more sand fell from above and 
I assisted her by making an arch-way above with a piece of white 
paste-board to hold up the sand. Soon she had the nest open again 
and at 4 :33 she flew away, this time leaving the nest open. 
At 8:25 on the following morning, wagon-wheels had again cov- 
ered up all the trace of the nest and belfragei was again in a quan- 
dary. Believing that she could not find her nest this time, I pro- 
ceeded to find it for her by cutting off slices of sand with a hoe in 
the direction of the nest until I came upon the tunnel four inches 
from the original entrance. All the time the wasp remained near 
the hoe like a playful kitten r — a remarkable performance for a 
wasp. She flew away before I had quite finished but returned in 
three minutes and went straight into the hole which I had prepared 
for her, resuming her work as though nothing had happened. 
At 8 :42 the wasp flew away leaving the hole open. At 10 :55 she 
had been back with a bug, which she took in as before, and had 
flown away after closing the nest behind her. This was the last 
I saw of her. On July 21st, I returned to dig up the nest but failed 
to trace it. 
The individual whose actions were just described (Ho. 39) was 
the least sensitive to my presence of all the wasps I have known. 
