76 
Some Solitary Wasps op Texas. 
and smaller sand grains loose with her powerful jaws she scratched 
the loose material out with her fore-feet or carried the larger pieces 
out with her mandibles. Her movements had almost machine-like 
regularity, entering the nest forwards and invariably backing out. 
Back and forth she went, darting in and out so quickly and smoothly 
that I can best compare her movements to those of a rubber ball at- 
tached to the end of an elastic band. After thus working for 
nineteen minutes, Priononyx flew away to a distance of twenty feet 
where she pulled forth a large green locust. Straddling her prey 
like Ammophila and grasping one of the short antennae she ran 
swiftly down the path. Within two feet of her nest she carried the 
grasshopper into a tuft of grass, which she easily mounted with her 
burden thanks to the length and the strength of her legs. After 
then digging at her nest for five minutes more she took up her vic- 
tim as before and carried it over to her nest, laying it down with its 
head near the entrance. She then, like Ammophila again, backed 
down the tunnel and pulled the locust after her. In a minute she 
reappeared and immediately began to close the tunnel. Scratching 
in pebbles and dust, she tamped them down with he^head. I now 
placed a net over her but she worked complacently on. I could 
see her every action through the thin net, for she worked but a 
foot below my eyes. After the net was full flush with the surface 
good sized pebbles were carried over it. Time and again these were 
tightly grasped in her mandibles and pressed down with might and 
main, the wasp standing the while straight on her head and almost 
turning a summersault while her busy buzz indicated the exertion 
which the operation demanded. Then she dug awhile in the aban- 
doned hole she had previously filled in but soon quit digging and 
filled it in a second time. I slightly raised the net and Priononyx 
flew away. 
An hour later she was again at work only a few inches from the 
scene of her previous operations, digging another nest. Three feet 
away I found another green locust under a clump of grass — an- 
other prey for another nest. Thus it seeing, certain that Thomae 
first catches her prey and then digs her nest. At this juncture I 
caught her. 
The greatest surprise was, however, yet in store for me. With a 
pick axe I dug a hole about a foot deep at a safe distance from the 
nest and with a trowel worked away the hard earth carefully in the 
direction of the nest so as to lay it open and yet not injure the 
grasshopper or the egg upon it. To my surprise I came upon a nest 
sooner than I had expected; to my still greater surprise the grass- 
