EUMENIDiE. 
211 
commonly seen engaged in making or provisioning the cells for their 
young. 
The life history of no Indian species has been really studied in great 
detail though 1 he habits of some of the species are known. These insects 
have the habits of the typical stinging predators, paralysing insects 
with their sting and laying them up for their young to feed on. Our 
Indian species are solitary and make cells, not nests. They are bene¬ 
ficial in that they destroy caterpillars, but their influence is probably 
not very great as their numbers are not very large. 
Bingham enumerates nine genera as Indian, of which all but three 
will be found in the plains. Eumenes is the important genus, contain¬ 
ing the well-known 4 4 potters,” which prepare mud cells in houses and 
store these with caterpillars. R. C. Wroughton describes rearing II 
cells, of which three yielded parasitic beetles (Mordellidce), three Chry- 
sidce, two flies and only three were unparasitized and produced Eumenes. 
An account of the habits of Indo-Malayan Eumenidce by Mons. 
Maindron will be found in Ann. Soc.' Ent. Fr. 1882, pp. 69, 169, 267 and 
1885, 219 ; the latter refers to E. petiolata only. Horne also has notes 
on the habits of Eumenids. The readers should see the account of 
Eumenes dimidiatipennis, Sss., by Lt.-Col. Cretin (in Jo urn. Bombay 
Nat. Hist. Soc. XIY, p. 820), which is a model of what such observa¬ 
tions should be. 
Some are extremely common in houses and are a serious nuisance 
owing to the spots chosen for nest building. E. petiolata, Fabr., E 
118 .—Eumenes petiolata. 
m 
dimidiati'pennis , Sss., E. 
esuriens, Fabr., and E. 
conica, Fabr., are common 
and may be looked for 
everywhere. Eumenes coni¬ 
ca, Fabr., makes its mud 
cells on walls, window 
frames, cement floors, etc., 
in houses. A single nest 
consists of seven to ten 
cells, each of which is 
round in plan, semi-elliptica 
