This is a very abundant insect, and may be observed flying about on any fine day during the summer, occasionally stopping to examine leaves and crevices in the bark of trees, where it is looking for the unfortunate spiders, which constitute the food of its progeny. The larva is a fat apodal grub, and may be found in the cells constructed by the perfect insect, which usually selects a large cylindrical hole in a log, previously drilled out by a weevil. Into this burrow she pushes a large quantity of spiders, which she has previously captured and paralyzed with her venomous sting. When her nest is {35}properly provisioned she deposits an egg in it, closes the hole with a neat plug of clay, and leaves the larva to quietly consume its half-dead companions. Each female, no doubt, forms a large number of these cells during the summer. While cutting up old logs for Coleoptera, the entomologist will not infrequently come across these nests, when the insects may be found in various stages of development. Unfortunately, however, the sight which usually meets his eye is a large number of legs and other fragments of spiders, the _fugax_ having long since deserted the burrow, and being very probably engaged in forming others in a neighbouring tree. These insects are very ferocious, and will attack spiders which considerably exceed them in size. On one occasion I noticed a very large one at rest in the centre of its web, which was suddenly noticed by a passing _fugax_, which immediately sprang upon its back, and, in spite of violent movements on the part of the spider, twisted her abdomen dexterously round and stung her victim in the centre of the thorax, between the insertions of the legs. This produced almost instantaneous paralysis in the spider; but it was apparently too large for the _fugax_ to carry away to her nest, as I saw the unfortunate creature hanging helplessly in its web some hours after the occurrence. Family FORMICIDÆ. _Formica zealandica_ (Plate III., fig. 3 [M], 3a [F], 3b [N], 3c, cocoon).