A NOBLE WASP.
(Monedula punctata.)
Naturalists, like kings and emperors, have their favourites,
and as my zoological sympathies, which are wider than
my knowledge, embrace all classes of beings, there
are of course several insects for which I have a special
regard; a few in each of the principal orders.
My chief favourite among the hymenopteras is the one
representative of the curious genus Monedula known
in La Plata. It is handsome and has original
habits, but it is specially interesting to me for another
reason: I can remember the time when it was extremely
rare on the pampas, so rare that in boyhood the sight
of one used to be a great event to me; and I have
watched its rapid increase year by year till it has
come to be one of our commonest species. Its singular
habits and intelligence give it a still better claim
to notice. It is a big, showy, loud-buzzing insect,
with pink head and legs, wings with brown reflections,
and body encircled with alternate bands of black and
pale gold, and has a preference for large composite
flowers, on the honey of which it feeds. Its
young is, however, an insect-eater; but the Monedula
does not, like other burrowing or sand wasps, put away
a store of insects or spiders, partially paralyzed,
as a provision for the grub till it reaches the pupa
state; it actually supplies the grub with fresh-caught
insects as long as food is required, killing the prey
it captures outright, and bringing it in to its young;
so that its habits, in this particular, are more bird-
than wasp-like.
The wasp lays its solitary egg at the extremity of
a hole it excavates for itself on a bare hard piece
of ground, and many holes are usually found close
together. When the grub—for I have
never been able to find more than one in a hole—has
come out from the egg, the parent begins to bring
in insects, carefully filling up the mouth of the hole
with loose earth after every visit. Without this
precaution, which entails a vast amount of labour,
I do not believe one grub out of every fifty would
survive, so overrun are these barren spots of ground
used as breeding-places with hunting spiders, ants,
and tiger-beetles. The grub is a voracious eater,
but the diligent mother brings in as much as it can
devour. I have often found as many as six or seven
insects, apparently fresh killed, and not yet touched
by the pampered little glutton, coiled up in the midst
of them waiting for an appetite.
The Monedula is an adroit fly-catcher, for though
it kills numbers of fire-flies and other insects,
flies are always preferred, possibly because they
are so little encumbered with wings, and are also more
easily devoured. It occasionally captures insects
on the wing, but the more usual method is to pounce
down on its prey when it is at rest. At one time,
before I had learnt their habits, I used frequently
to be startled by two or three or more of these wasps
