70 SPIDERS [OH. 



remain fresh for many days, an instinct taught them 

 to solve it in the most remarkable manner. The 

 problem of the spider was different. It was a case of 

 killing instantly, or being killed ; a merely wounded 

 bee is as formidable as one unharmed. What Fabre 

 desired to know was this : did the spider trust to one 

 invariable deadly stroke in dealing with the bee, 

 as the solitary wasp, according to its species, had 

 been found to act always precisely in the same way in 

 paralysing its victim ? 



To settle this point the spider must be seen at 

 work, and the obvious plan seemed to be to enclose 

 a bee and a tarantula in a glass vessel and see what 

 would happen. But nothing happened at all. The 

 spider, away from its burrow, refused to attack. The 

 equally matched antagonists treated each other with 

 the greatest respect and only evinced a desire to keep 

 as far apart as possible. Even when placed in the 

 same tube both acted on the defensive, and no light 

 was thrown on the problem. 



But Fabre's ingenuity was equal to the occasion. 

 It occurred to him that to use as a bait an insect of 

 burrowing habits had been a tactical error ; if instead 

 of a bumble bee some other insect, equally formidable, 

 but not attracted by holes in the ground, were 

 selected for the purpose, the spider might be induced 

 to rush forth and reveal its method of attack. 



A large carpenter bee Xylocopa was chosen 



