SPIDERS -GENERAL INTELLIGENCE. 219 



some of the already ensnared flies found time and opportunity 

 to escape. This game was carried on by me for some weeks, as 

 it seemed to me curious. But one day when the spider seemed 

 very ravenous, and regularly flew at each fly offered to it, I 

 began teasing it. As soon as it had got hold of the fly I pulled 

 it back again with the pincers. It took this exceedingly ill. 

 The first time, as I finally left the fly with it, it managed to 

 forgive me, but when I later took a fly right away, our friend- 

 ship was destroyed for ever. On the following day it treated 

 my offered flies with contempt, and would not move, and on the 

 third day it had disappeared. 1 



Jesse relates the following anecdote, which seems to 

 display on the part of a spider somewhat remote adapta- 

 tion of means to novel circumstances. He confined a 

 spider with her eggs under a glass upon a marble mantel- 

 piece. Having surrounded the eggs with web, 



She next proceeded to fix one of her threads to the upper 

 part of the glass which confined her, and carried it to the further 

 end of the piece of grass, and in a short time had succeeded in 

 raising it up and fixing it perpendicularly, working her threads 

 from the sides of the glass to the top and sides of the piece of 

 grass. Her motive in doing this was obvious. She not only 

 rendered the object of her care more secure than it would 

 have been had it remained flat on the marble, but she was 

 probably aware that the cold from the marble would chill her 

 eggs, and prevent their arriving at maturity : she therefore 

 raised them from it in the manner I have described. 2 



Mr. Belt gives the following account of the intelligence 

 which certain species of South American spiders display ir 

 escaping from the terrible hosts of the Eciton ants : 



Many of the spiders would escape by hanging suspended by 

 a thread of silk from the branches, safe from the foes that 

 swarmed both above and below. 



I noticed that spiders generally were most intelligent in 

 escaping, and did not, like the cockroaches and other insects, 

 take shelter in the first hiding-place they found, only to be 

 driven out again, or perhaps caught by the advancing army of 

 ants. I have often seen large spiders making off many yards 

 in advance, and apparently determined to put a good distance 



' Loo. cit., p. 319. 



2 Gleanings, vol. L, p. 103. 



