Sphex
a genus of hymenopterous insects of the family Sphegida, closely allied to the true wasps. The sphex wasps are solitary in habit, and there are no workers as in the social forms.
The female hollows out, at the end of a long passage, three or four chambers, in each of which she deposits an egg and a store of food for the larva she will never see. The food consists of grasshoppers or other insects, and Fabre gives a minute account of the way in which the sphex attacks her victim, and, after a long and violent struggle, throws it on its back and stings it in the neck and between the thorax and abdomen, each time piercing a ganglion. The in-
In geometry, a solid or volume bounded by a surface, every point of which is equally distant from a point within, called the center. Or it is a volume that may be generated by revolving a semicircle about its diameter as an axis. The distance from any part of the surface to the center is called a radius of the sphere. Every section of a sphere made by a plane is a circle, and all sections made by planes equally dis-sect, completely paralyzed, but alive, and tant from the center are equal. A circle of the sphere whose plane passes through the center is a great circle; all other circles are small circles. All great circles are equal, and their radii are equal to the radii of the sphere. The surface of a sphere is equal to the product of the diameter by the circumference of a great circle; or it is equivalent to the area of four great circles. Denoting the radius of the sphere by r, and its diameter by d, we have the foltowing formula for the surface: s=4pr² = pd² = 3.14159 The volume of a sphere is equal to the product of its surface by one-third of therefore not liable to putrefaction, is then dragged to the mouth of the nest, where it is relinquished for a short time while the wasp enters alone to see that all is right. So automatic is this habit of reconnoitering that if the grasshopper be removed a little distance the wasp drags it back to the same spot and again enters alone. This was tested by the ob-- server 40 times in succession, and each time the wasp paid her preliminary visit of inspection. Four paralyzed insects are placed in each chamber, which is sealed up as it is finished. When all are full the mouth of the passage is also closed, and the nest is abandoned.
SPHINX