Marvels of the Universe 875 
and pulling it here and there to test if it was safely balanced. Then with a parting glance, she flew 
into the air and disappeared from view. 
About fifteen minutes later she returned, but only to look at her prize, for she flew off 
again almost instantly. Twenty-five minutes later she again returned and rushed hurriedly to her 
spider, but did not touch it. Instead, she arranged her toilet for some eight or ten minutes. 
Evidently she had been digging her nest in the sand-bank somewhere near, and was now having a 
brush-up. 
Suddenly she set up her shrill piping and literally tumbled to the ground with her spider, and 
then she seemed possessed of extraordinary strength, and the spider was dragged at a reckless pace 
for more than twenty feet, and then laid down while she fluttered her wings and quivered her 
feelers—perhaps she was taking her bearings. Another sharp pull sideways for a few inches then 
followed, when she suddenly let go, turned and plunged her head into a neat round hole at the foot 
of the bank. 
A moment later the Wasp and spider disappeared into the hole, the last view of the latter being 
its vanishing legs. Two or three minutes later the head of the Wasp appeared, and perhaps at that 
moment she was depositing her egg on the spider's body. Slowly she emerged, and then 
quickly raked up the sand with legs and mandibles and neatly filled up the hole—so neatly, indeed, 
that I found it quite impossible to locate the spot afterwards—and then hurried from the place 
(as if afraid of being seen there) to brush up her wings before taking flight. 
So the Spider-hunting Wasp labours for her offspring, which she will never see. Nevertheless, it 
is provided with an ample store of living food material to supply its wants when it hatches from the 
egg ; and, if no parasite has surreptitiously placed its egg on the spider, or within the nest, there 
will some day next season emerge from that hole a red and black active little Wasp like the one 
whose labours we have witnessed. 
PLANT MIMICRY 
THERE are many persons 
who believe that the 
flowers of certain of our 
native Orchids offer re- 
markable cases of the 
mimicry of insects. Such 
are the Bee Orchis, the 
Fly Orchis, the Spider § 
Orchis and the Butterfly | 
Orchis. But just why 
such mimicry should 
exist has never been ex- 
plained satisfactorily. 
Until such explanation 
is forthcoming, we fear 
that these “ counterfeit 
presentments ’’ must be 
classed as merely for- 
tuitous and having no 
definite relation to the 
lite of the plant. A much Another species of Mesembryanthemum that escapes notice by mimicking the 
better case is that of the angular fragments of rock among which it grows. 
Photo by) (zh. J. Wallis. 
PLANT MIMICRY. 
