Ch. 12: 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