the wall for a few scraps of mortar, two or three fairly large pieces,
which she carries to the tube, to close it up. The task is done. She flies
away.

Next day I inspect this strange burrow. The Spider is at the bottom of the
silken tube, isolated on every side, as though in a hammock. The Wasp's egg
is glued not to the ventral surface of the victim but to the back, about
the middle, near the beginning of the abdomen. It is white, cylindrical and
about a twelfth of an inch long. The few bits of mortar which I saw carried
have but very roughly blocked the silken chamber at the end. Thus Pompilus
apicalis lays her quarry and her eggs not in a burrow of her own making,
but in the Spider's actual house. Perhaps the silken tube belongs to this
very victim, which in that event provides both board and lodging. What a
shelter for the larva of this Pompilus: the warm retreat and downy hammock
of the Segestria!

Here then, already, we have two Spider-huntresses, the Ringed Pompilus and
P. apicalis, who, unversed in the miner's craft, establish their offspring
inexpensively in accidental chinks in the walls, or even in the lair of the
Spider on whom the larva feeds. In these cells, acquired without exertion,
they build only an attempt at a wall with a few fragments of mortar. But we
must beware of generalizing about this expeditious method of establishment.
Other Pompili are true diggers, valiantly sinking a burrow in the soil, to
a depth of a couple of inches. These include the Eight-spotted Pompilus (P.
octopunctatus, PANZ.), with her black-and-yellow livery and her amber
wings, a little darker at the tips. For her game she chooses the Epeirae
(E. fasciata, E. sericea) (For the Garden-spiders known as the Banded
Epeira and the Silky Epeira cf. "The Life of the Spider": chapters 11, 13,
14 et passim.--Translator's Note.), those fat Spiders, magnificently
adorned, who lie in wait at the centre of their large, vertical webs. I am