58 
Some Solitary Wasps of Texas. 
hovered for the twinkling of an eye, — just long enough to give me 
a glimpse of the green leaf-hopper, which protruded a little beyond 
her red abdomen. After this momentary quiver in front of the 
nest, abdominale takes a beautiful bee-line right into her open por- 
tal. It is a pretty sight to see this dive into the nest; it seems to 
indicate a wonderfully keen sight for an insect thus to see the 
tiny hole from the height of four or five inches and to judge her 
flight so truly. 
B. abdominale captures the same prey as Alyson melleus , leaf- 
hoppers of the species Tettigonia bifida, Say. She is a wasp of 
half the length of her competitor, but it takes her less time to catch 
her prey. On September 14th, she brought home seventeen to 
twenty leaf -hoppers, thirteen of which I saw carried in. The times 
at which this was done are as follows : 10 :40, 10 :55, 11 :05, 11 :20, 
11:27, 11:35, 11:53, 11:57, 1:50, 1:57, 2:05, 2:09, 2:27. On 
each trip she remained inside but a few seconds. Her white sil- 
very face was the first to appear at the entrance. Here she waited 
but an instant before she was off like a flash, often so quickly that 
I did not notice the direction of her flight. 
Thyreopus ( Crabro ) argus shows the same haste in getting away 
from her nest and displays great acrobatic powers in the grace with 
which she slips into it on her return. Only once did abdominale 
hesitate a little, flying around the nest in a zig-zag manner, before 
leaving. The work on the nest was continued for at least three 
days, since two days were spent in storing alone. I failed to trace 
this nest, belonging to Ho. 67, but succeeded in tracing that of Ho. 
70. This went in nearly horizontally for two and a half inches 
and then down nearly vertically for four inches with a uniform 
diameter of two mm. The tunnel had a small pocket at-the bottom 
containing a number of leaf-hoppers, but no eggs. 
