its thorax, sustained at
the sides by the two upraised fore legs. After a moment's pause with
this burden, the insect would make a sudden short darting flight of a
foot or more in a quick circuit, hurling the sand a yard or more distant
from the burrow. At the end of about fifteen minutes the burrow was sunk
to the depth of an inch and a half, the wasp entirely disappearing, and
indicated only by the continuous buzzing.

At this time, the luncheon hour having arrived, I was obliged to pause
in my investigations, and in order to be able to locate the burrow in
the event of its obliteration by the wasp before my return, I scratched
a circle in the hard dirt, the hole being at its exact centre.

[Illustration]

Upon my return, an hour later, I was met with a surprise. The ways of
the digger-wasps of various species were familiar, but I now noted a
feature of wasp-engineering which indeed seems to await its chronicler,
as I find no mention of it by the wasp-historians.

At the exact centre of my circle, in place of a cavity, I now found a
tiny pile of stones, supported upon a small stick and fragment of leaf,
which had been first drawn across the opening.

This was evidently a mere temporary protection of the burrow, I
reasoned, while the digger had departed in search of prey, and my
surmise was soon proved to be correct, as I observed the wasp, with
bobbing abdomen and flipping wings, zigzagging about the vicinity.
Presently disappearing beneath a small plantain leaf, she quickly
emerged, drawing behind her not a spider, as in the case of her smaller
predecessor, but a big green caterpillar, nearly double her own length,
and as large around as a slate-pencil--a peculiar, pungent,
waspy-scented species of "puss-moth" larva, which is found on the elm,
and with which I chanced to be familiar.

The victim being now ready for burial, the wasp sexton proceeded to open
the tomb. Seizing one stone after another in her widely opened jaws,
they were scattered right and left, when, with apparent ease and prompt
despatch, the listless larva was drawn towards the burrow, into whose
depths he soon disappeared. Then, after a short and suggestive
interval, followed the emergence of the wasp, and the prompt filling in
of the requisite earth to level the cavity, much as already described,
after which the wasp took wing and disappeared, presumably bent upon a
repetition of the performance elsewhere. But she had not simply buried
this