After this performance had lasted for five minutes she brought her burden back to the same spot that it had occupied before, laid it down, and without vouchsafing to us any explanation of her conduct, began to burrow into the soft earth. She went down head first, backing out with the dirt, which she carried with the front legs. While she was thus occupied we defended her booty against two hunting parties of ants which, at different times, fell upon it and would certainly have carried it off if we had not been at hand.
It took the wasp twenty minutes to open the burrow, although, as we afterward learned, it had been excavated before. At the end of that time she turned around inside, came out head first, and dragged the cricket within.
We at once opened the nest, but found it impossible to follow the tunnel on account of the crumbling of the earth. Indeed, we almost concluded that we were doomed to complete failure, for it was not until we had gone down between six and seven inches that we found, in a little pocket, our wasp in company with three crickets, upon one of which was a larva a day or two old. At the time we knew nothing of the habits of Bembex spinolæ, and we were much astonished to find a wasp which evidently fed her young from day to day.
The contents of the nest were carefully conveyed to our wasp-nursery at the cottage. The cricket that we had seen taken in was dead, as was also the one upon which the larva was feeding. The third one was alive, as was shown by a rhythmic movement of the palp on the right side. By the next day, however, this one also was dead.
On the morning of the third day, July thirty-first, the larva had eaten all of the first cricket and the greater part of one of the others, leaving only the large hind legs. Supplying the place of the mother, we killed two more and put them into the tube. One of these was eight millimeters long, this being about the size of those which the wasp herself had caught, while the other was of another species and much larger, being thirty millimeters long. Its size and kind, however, made no difference to the larva, which attacked this one next, although there were two small ones yet untouched. It ate only half of this big one, however, and then passed on. On August second we gave it two more small crickets, and for that day and the one following its good appetite continued, but on August fourth it stopped eating. We thought that its larval life must be completed, and expected to see it spin its cocoon, but something was lacking which we were too ignorant to supply, and on August fifth it died. It had eaten six small crickets and half of the large one, which was equal to about two more. Thus ended our only acquaintance with this interesting little wasp.
The second week of August furnished such good play in our garden that island life was neglected; but one brilliant morning we rowed over to the home of Bembex and Philanthus, hoping that something new was in store for us. We were not disappointed, for as we climbed the crest we met a splendid Chlorion cœruleum dressed in shining blue, cricket in mouth, plunging down the hillside through the long grass. Twenty-five feet below, she reached her underground home, vanished for two or three minutes, and then, coming to the entrance, turned her head from side to side as though listening. Some indiscreet insect was chirping loudly not far away, and before long the wasp ran out into the grass, flew to a stump, dropped to the ground, flew to the top of a tall weed, dropped again, and ran into a hole. A moment later she came out, dragging a very limp cricket. An ant that crossed her path was chased vindictively, and then the cricket was placed on its back and scraped from head to foot four or five times with the mandibles. She then ran a little farther, laid it down again, and repeated the operation, after which it was taken into the nest.
CHLORION AND THE INDISCREET CRICKET