prettier to look at? But in her life this wasp is not beautiful. At
home in summer they were the pests of my life, for nothing would serve
to keep them out. One day, while we were seated at dinner, a clay nest,
which a wasp had succeeded in completing unobserved, detached itself
from the ceiling and fell with a crash on to the table, where it was
shattered to pieces, scattering a shower of green half-living spiders
round it. I shall never forget the feeling of intense repugnance I
experienced at the sight, coupled with detestation of the pretty but
cruel little architect. There is, amongst our wasps, even a more
accomplished spider-scourge than the mason-wasp, and I will here give a
brief account of its habits. On the grassy pampas, dry bare spots of
soil are resorted to by a class of spiders that either make or take
little holes in the ground to reside in, and from which they rush forth
to seize their prey. They also frequently sit inside their dens and
patiently wait there for the intrusion of some bungling insect. Now, in
summer, to a dry spot of ground like this, comes a small wasp, scarcely
longer than a blue-bottle fly, body and wings of a deep shining purplish
blue colour, with only a white mark like a collar on the thorax. It
flirts its blue wings, hurrying about here and there, and is extremely
active, and of a slender graceful figure--the type of an assassin. It
visits and explores every crack and hole in the ground, and, if you
watch it attentively, you will at length see it, on arriving at a hole,
give a little start backwards. It knows that a spider lies concealed
within. Presently, having apparently matured a plan of attack, it
disappears into the hole and remains there for some time. Then, just
when you are beginning to think that the little blue explorer has been
trapped, out it rushes, flying in terror, apparently, from the spider
who issues close behind in hot pursuit; but, before they are three
inches away from the hole, quick as lightning the wasp turns on its
follower, and the two become locked together in a deadly embrace.