various points in the Atlantic coast States. Last spring there was a large colony of these established beneath the sweeping limbs of a fir tree near the main entrance to the Smithsonian Institution. The ground in this locality was riddled with their burrows. A great many cases of the sting of this formidable wasp are known to me. Years ago I knew of a case where a passenger upon a Mississippi River boat was stung by one of them on the back of the neck, and the man died eventually from the effect of it. The insect was knocked down on the deck at the time, and was found to be bearing a large cicada in its mandibles.
Some of the smaller fossorial wasps appear like large ants, the females being without wings. They also have a sting, and are clothed with a fine hairy coat, often of a bright yellow or brilliant vermilion. In New Mexico, in sandy places, I frequently saw these insects, but never more than one at a time, and only a few in the course of a day. They have been called "solitary ants" (Mutilla?). There are hundreds of species in the world of these fossorial wasps, some winged, others wingless; some very small, others measure three or four inches across the wings (Pepsis, etc.); while many of them exhibit the most wonderful coloring in metallic blues, greens, reds, and yellow. Nearly all have the habit of paralyzing other insects by stinging them, then carrying their helpless victims to their subterranean nests, where they are buried alive by the side of their eggs, so that when the larvæ are hatched out they find a fresh repast awaiting them in the form of these living but paralyzed spiders, caterpillars, etc. The "mud daubers" have the same habits, and we all know them, and how they, with pellets of mud, build their curious cells against walls and fences and in all sorts of places about our country houses. These are great species to paralyze spiders and place them in these mud cells and sealing them up afterward for the future use of their young (Pelopœus). When collecting in New Orleans I frequently did a good day's work in spider collecting by cracking open these mud nests. Packard also refers to those sand and mud wasps that dig deep holes in our gravel walks and have the instinct to sting grasshoppers in one of the thoracic ganglia, thus paralyzing the victim, in which the wasp lays her eggs; and the young, hatching, feed upon the living but paralyzed grasshoppers, the store of living food not being exhausted until the larval wasp is ready to stop eating and finish its transformations (Sphex ichneumonea).
In a paragraph above I have referred to the family Vespidœ of the group Diploptera,[1] and it includes some of the most inter-
- ↑ From the Greek diplos, doubled, and ptera, wings, referring to the fact that the representatives of this family, when in a state of repose, fold their fore wings longitudinally.
