The next point is to decide upon the precise spot for the nest, and here our wasp shows herself very uncertain and hard to please. Never have we seen one settle down and complete her work in the spot first chosen. She dashes at a place and scratches and digs away with furious energy for a few minutes, and then, starting up, she darts wildly hither and thither until a new place, near by, is fixed upon and another beginning made. In one instance eight nests were started and some of them nearly finished, the little worker seeming to be beside herself with excitement. After the decision is finally made the tunneling is a rapid process. In one case it took the wasp a whole hour to complete the work, but out of the thirty nests that we saw made, nineteen were finished in from twenty to twenty–five minutes. Like Fabre’s Sphex the wasp interrupts herself three or four times to visit her spider and make sure that it is safe. When all is done she brings the strix to within a foot or two of the opening, runs to the nest to take a final look, and then, going backward herself, pulls it inside. In two instances we saw the fidgety little creature go through a most comical performance, which again recalls the Sphex of Fabre. Leaving her treasure on the ground, she ran to the nest and kicked out a little more earth; hastening back she dragged it an inch nearer; then away she went to the nest again for more digging, and so on, dropping her spider half a dozen times before she at last brought it home. In two other cases in which there was no such anxiety about the size of the nest, there was, in reality, more reason for it. Indeed, in one instance the opening had to be enlarged before the spider could be taken in. There is a wide–winged parasitic fly that, having nothing else to do, lays prodigious numbers of eggs, not in any particular nest, but at the edge of holes wherever it may chance to see them. It hovers about over the ground until it comes to an opening, dips down twice or thrice, ovipositing each time, and then passes along. The habit of scratching out a little dirt at the threshold, just before the prey is brought in, seemingly from a desire to enlarge the nest, or in other cases from mere nervousness, is perhaps of use in destroying these eggs, which might otherwise adhere to the spider or caterpillar as it is dragged over them. The laying of the egg takes only two or three minutes, and then the hole is filled up. In this part of her work quinquenotatus shows a great deal of variation, sometimes coming out of the hole and sweeping in the dirt with her first legs and sometimes standing in the tunnel while she draws the earth in with her mandibles and then jams it down with the end of her abdomen. The former plan was in vogue in the garden, while the latter was more common with the wasps on the island. After the hole is filled the spot is covered with pellets of earth and pebbles brought from a little distance, very much as is done by Ammophila.