300 C. H. TURNER. 



steel and made the edges quite dull. With these scissors an attempt 

 was made to remove the tip of a leg of a letisimulating ant-lion. The 

 scissors were too dull to cut through the chitin ; instead of being 

 severed, the leg became wedged in between the blades. The 

 feint was terminated immediately. 



With the exception of experiment number four, these ampu- 

 tations were performed several times. On one occasion, a larva 

 recovered the moment I cut a leg; on another day, the same thing 

 happened when I severed a mandible. With these two excep- 

 tions, the results were always as stated above. How shall we 

 harmonize the fact that the pinching of a leg or, sometimes, the 

 blowing of the breath on the larva terminates the feint, while the 

 severing of a leg, or a mandible, or both invokes no response? 

 Shall we decide that such a pinch produces a greater physiological 

 shock than a sudden cut with a pair of sharp scissors? Is it 

 possible that a breath of air produces a greater shock than an 

 amputation with sharp instruments? 



Relative Duration of Successive Death Feints. In his study of the 

 beetle Scarites gigas Fabre (24) found that the duration of the 

 first five successive feints gradually increased from the first to 

 the last. The Severins (37), in their study of the giant water 

 bugs Belostoma and Nepa, and Gee and Lathrop (26), in their 

 study of the plum curculio (Conotrachelus nemuphar), find great 

 irregularity in the lengths of the successive feints. 



To test the matter, an ant-lion was removed from its pit, 

 placed on a board, and made to letisimulate by roughly turning 

 it on its back. As soon as it recovered from one feint, it was 

 roughly turned on its back and induced to letisimulate again. 

 This was repeated until it had had an opportunity to letisimulate 

 twenty times. By means of a stop-watch, the duration of each 

 feint was obtained. One hundred individuals were thus experi- 

 mented with and the results recorded in a table. Criticially 

 examined, the table revealed a number of interesting things, 

 (i) There are marked individual variations. (2) In twenty 

 opportunities the individual usually letisimulates less than twenty 

 times. (3) The total time consumed in twenty opportunities 

 to letisimulate varied from one minute to two hours and twenty- 

 three minutes. The average for the 100 individuals was nineteen 



