Was this a young wasp out on her first hunt? What strange antiphonal desires must have stirred at the sight of the nest, and how mysterious was the power that drew her to it! Was there in her brain any image of the queen she must seek and sting and carry away from among her guards and subjects? Or had she perhaps already achieved the adventure, and did the memory of the bitter nips that little ant jaws can give make it a harder task than it was the first time, when she risked the ills she knew not of? That she hesitated and carried on the work reluctantly seemed to show that her flesh was weak and needed the prick of conscience to drive it on. Had we here then the small beginnings of moral sense and perception of duty? Can it be that of such humble origin is the power that “doth preserve the stars from wrong”? We went on with these meditations for several days while lingering, with gradually diminishing hopefulness, over one ant–hill after another. The wasps were carrying in winged queens by the score, but they did not come our way to find them; and although we ranged about widely, we failed to see the capture. Occasionally we met a frigidus hunting, running about on the ground and poking her head, not only into ant holes, but into holes of all sorts, and as we sometimes saw young queens (wingless however) starting to dig their nests, we thought these might be the object of the search. The weather was cold and windy, most unpropitious for swarming, and yet frigidus was working as briskly as ever; so that we began to feel sure that she could not depend upon meeting the queens outside the nest, but must enter to get them. Just as this point we received a letter from Mr. William M. Wheeler, well known as an authority on ants, saying that he felt very sure that the wasp could not extract the queens from the nest, but must find them running on the ground, just after the nuptial flight, before they dug their holes and started their colonies. Respecting this opinion, but still feeling unconvinced, we caught a wasp in a glass, and carrying it to an ant–hill, inverted it so that she was confined just over the entrance. After buzzing up and down for a moment, she alighted and walked calmly into the hole; but a fraction of a second later she came rushing madly out again, pursued by the most furious lot of ants that ever defended the home city against invasion. Down tumbled our air castles about courage and duty, for however frigidus gets her queens, it is not in that way. We have not yet seen the meeting and the capture, but hope that sometime we may be lucky enough to be on the right spot at the right time. Chapter VIII THE WOOD–BORERS OUR two species of Trypoxylon are both slender–waisted black wasps, albopilosum having bunches of snowy white hairs on the first legs, and measuring three quarters of an inch in length, while rubrocinctum is a little smaller, and, as the name implies, wears a red girdle.