All cause for anxiety being over, the wasp now resumed her journey. Before long she came to a shallow depression in the ground which was partly sheltered by an overhanging lump of earth, and under this covering she dropped the spider and again began to squeeze its legs. After a moment she removed it to the other side of the depression, where it was subjected to further manipulation. Next, her toilet was attended to, and then the spider was carried back and placed again under the lump of earth. At least ten times was that limp and helpless creature dragged from one side to the other of the little depression, a distance of about two inches, the time between being filled in by the wasp with cleaning herself and squeezing the legs of her victim. After forty minutes of this tedious delay the moment came when she picked up her burden with renewed determination and started rapidly on her way. We kept very close to her, but she did not allow our presence to interrupt her work, and, indeed, paid no attention to it. After she had gone along for a distance of about eight feet there was another pause, of only five minutes this time, and when she resumed her onward march it was in a new direction. Thus far she had gone almost due south, but now she turned and went six feet toward the west. Suddenly the spider was dropped. There was no hole in sight, but the wasp seemed to feel that some important crisis had arrived. Her whole manner was excited and flurried, and we thought that surely we had reached the neighborhood of the nest. How little we understood her! Her nest was still far away, and it may be that she had just begun to realize that the task she had undertaken was too heavy for her accomplishment—that at her present rate of progress her strength would be exhausted before she could reach her goal. At any rate, something was wrong. The spider was left unprotected on the ground while she made a number of long excursions without it, sometimes being gone as much as fifteen minutes. On coming back from these trips she would return to the task of squeezing the legs with such energy and persistence that we expected to see them drop off. Then she would run over the ground in all directions, looking under lumps of earth and stones and poking her head into every little hole. Was she trying to find some suitable spot near at hand to take the place of the one which she had prepared or selected at a distance?