however, she came to the place, ran in for a moment, brought the spider nearer, dropped it and ran to the nest once more, caught it up again, and tried to back in with it. She was holding it by the under side of the body, the venter being toward the hole, and the legs spread out and stopped its entrance. A moment’s tugging convinced her that this would not do, and she then turned the spider over, holding it by the back, whereupon the legs at once folded themselves across the underside of the thorax, and it was drawn out of sight. After the egg was laid the wasp came up to the edge of the hole, and drawing in some earth with her mandibles began to dance up and down upon it, jamming it into place with her abdomen. Afterwards she came up higher and drew the dirt in with her first legs, not getting out of the hole until it was entirely filled up. Then began a remarkable performance. Bracing herself firmly on her legs she used the end of her abdomen as an instrument, and with it she now pounded the earth, now _rubbed_ it, like a pestle in a mortar, and now used it as a brush to sweep away loose dust. Sometimes she would throw a little earth back under her body with her mandibles and rub it down with her abdomen. This part of the work being finished, she spent a few minutes in sweeping the ground with her first legs, and then brought a quantity of small objects and placed them over the nest,—a little stick, the petal of a faded flower, a scrap of dead leaf, and so on, until ten or twelve things had been collected. This artistic finishing up of her duties recalled Ammophila; but among our subsequent examples of fuscipennis we never saw one do her work with such nicety. They were usually contented to fill in the nest more or less compactly, sometimes doing much of the work from the outside, to brush off the surface without any rubbing or pounding, and then to bring two or three little pebbles or lumps of earth to place over the spot.