The other Sphex first secures her prey, which is too large and heavy to be carried far, and then digs her nest in the neighborhood of the capture. This being done, she returns to her victim, and straddling it drags it by one or both of the antennæ. Sometimes the whole journey is accomplished at once, but oftener the wasp suddenly drops her burden and runs rapidly to her nest. Perhaps it seems to her that the entrance is not large enough to accommodate a creature of such size; perhaps she imagines some imperfections of detail which would impede the process of storing it up. The work is retouched, the doorway enlarged, the threshold smoothed. Then she returns to her booty and again starts with it. After a few steps the Sphex seems to be seized with another idea. She has visited the doorway, but has not seen the interior. Who knows whether all is well within? She drops her prey and again runs off. The visit to the interior is made, more touches are given, and once more she returns. Will the journey be accomplished this time? Impossible to say. Some wasps, more given to worry than others or more forgetful of the small details of architecture, to repair their neglect or to clear up their suspicions, abandon their booty five or six times in succession to retouch the nest or simply to visit the interior. The prey, once brought to the nest, is carried in without the preliminaries that are common to the other species. Chapter IV SEVERAL LITTLE WASPS In a search for the nest of one of our garden wasps we found, in the woods beyond the fence, an old, weather–beaten stump which was riddled with holes both large and small. The large ones were evidently the passage–ways of ants, and were in constant use. The small ones seemed to be uninhabited; but thinking they might contain the nests we were in search of, and hoping that if we watched long enough we might see our wasps flitting in and out, we settled ourselves close by. We were resolved to stay as long as was necessary, and we blessed the fate that made it our duty to sit on the grass under the shade of a wide–spreading oak rather than in the distressing glare and heat of the garden; for this was on the tenth of July, and the weather was what the farmers call “seasonable.” Twenty, thirty, forty minutes passed. Our eyes ached with persistent gazing, and we had nearly made up our minds that the likely–looking little holes were untenanted, when lo! a tiny wasp, carrying something which we could not see distinctly, darted into one of them. It was gone so quickly that we could not be sure that it was the species we were looking for, and when it reappeared, after two or three minutes, we saw that it was not. This point being determined, we watched the hole with redoubled interest.