to unearth a few Bembex larvae. The entrances to the Tachytes' dwelling
open upon the little upright bank of the section. At the beginning of July
the work is in full swing. It must have been going on already for a week or
two, for I find very forward larvae, as well as recent cocoons. There are
here, digging into the sand or returning from expeditions with their booty,
some hundred females, whose burrows, all very close to one another, cover
an area of barely a square yard. This hamlet, small in extent, but
nevertheless densely populated, shows us the Mantis-slayer under a moral
aspect which is not shared by the Locust slayer, Panzer's Tachytes, who
resembles her so closely in costume. Though engaged in individual tasks,
the first seeks the society of her kind, as do certain of the Sphex-wasps,
while the second establishes herself in solitude, after the fashion of the
Ammophila. Neither the personal form nor the nature of the occupation
determines sociability.

Crouching voluptuously in the sun, on the sand at the foot of the bank, the
males lie waiting for the females, to plague them as they pass. They are
ardent lovers, but cut a poor figure. Their linear dimensions are barely
half those of the other sex, which implies a volume only one-eighth as
great. At a short distance they appear to wear on their heads a sort of
gaudy turban. At close quarters this headgear is seen to consist of the
eyes, which are very large and a bright lemon-yellow and which almost
entirely surround the head.

At ten o'clock in the morning, when the heat begins to grow intolerable to
the observer, there is a continual coming and going between the burrows and
the tufts of grass, everlasting, thyme and wormwood, which constitute the
Tachytes' hunting-grounds within a moderate radius. The journey is so short
that the Wasp brings her game home on the wing, usually in a single flight.
She holds it by the fore-part, a very judicious precaution, which is