A few days later we saw Larra quebecensis, another little grasshopper wasp, with the same red abdomen as tarsata, going to and fro about her nest, occasionally throwing out a little sand. She ran about near by all through the afternoon, but was not in a mood for work. On the next morning at ten o’clock, we found her touching up the nest a little, after which she left it open and flew away. In an hour she came leaping along like Tachytes, holding a small grasshopper in the third legs. This was placed inside the door while she turned around, and was then pulled in. She came out immediately, and in twenty minutes brought a second, and in ten more a third grasshopper, staying within this time for some minutes, after which she closed the nest. We took out the grasshoppers, one of which bore an egg underneath, in the middle, in front of the first pair of legs. The grasshoppers lived for five, six, and seven days, but the egg did not develop. We once saw a quebecensis that had laid down her grasshopper while she hunted for her nest. She was moving in sinuous lines up and down the face of a cliff, with incredible rapidity; we could not distinguish her, but could see only a black streak with an occasional flash of crimson. When she rises on her wings, too, she is wonderfully quick, disappearing as if by magic, it being quite impossible to even guess at the direction she is taking. Chapter XI WORKERS IN CLAY THE nests of Pelopæus cœruleus and Pelopæus cementarius, our two mud–daubers, are common under eaves and in other sheltered places, and many a country boy on opening them has been astonished to find that they do not contain wasps, but are crammed with spiders. Let them alone, however, and the wasps will arrive, for somewhere in the mass is an egg; and when it hatches the spiders will serve as breakfast, dinner and tea for the larva, until the change from the Arachnida to the Hymenoptera has been accomplished. Poor spiders! it is a wonder that there are any left, such thousands and tens of thousands are destroyed by these tremendously energetic enemies.