Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/56

 with small spiders of the genus Gastracantha, in the usual half-dead state to which the mother wasps reduce the insects which are to serve as food for their progeny.

Besides the Pelopæus there were three or four kinds of Trypoxylon, a genus also found in Europe, and which some Naturalists have supposed to be parasitic, because the legs are not furnished with the usual row of strong bristles for digging, characteristic of the family to which it belongs. The species of Trypoxylon, however, are all building wasps; two of them which I observed (T. albitarse and an undescribed species) provision their nests with spiders, a third (T. aurifrons) with small caterpillars. Their habits are similar to those of the Pelopæus; namely, they carry off the clay in their mandibles, and have a different song when they hasten away with the burthen, to that which they sing whilst at work. Trypoxylon albitarse, which is a large black kind, three-quarters of an inch in length, makes a tremendous fuss whilst building its cell. It often chooses the walls or doors of chambers for this purpose, and when two or three are at work in the same place their loud humming keeps the house in an uproar. The cell is a tubular structure about three inches in length. T. aurifrons, a much smaller species, makes a neat little nest shaped like a carafe; building rows of them together in the corners of verandahs.