DEATH AND ITS DISGUISES. 



spider ancestor may have been a feeble beginning of the liabii, \vhi(3h 

 gradually was developed into the fixed characters which we now 

 i"l?'^ observe. A supposition of this sort, it is true, has no facts to 

 Habit support it, but is in accordance with prevailing ideas as t(j 

 the evolution of many, if not all the interesting trails in ani- 

 mal behavior. 



Jn (his connection one may perhaps allude to the remarkable sem- 

 l)lance of death into which the spider involuntarily falls wlicn prickeil 

 with the sting of the digger wasp. I have referred to this in tlie preced- 

 ing chapter, and quote here in confirmation a remark of Mr. Fabre, de- 

 scriptive of the condition of Lycosa narbonensis of France, after being 

 paralyzed bj' Pompilus annulatus. The spider is immoliile, litiie 



_ , . as when living, without the slightest trace of a wound. It is 

 Paralysis. . „ . %^ ^ . , . 



lite. 111 tact, minus movement. Viewed trom a distance, the tip 



of the feet tremble a little ; and that is all. One specimen disentombed 

 from a wasp's burrow was placed in a box, where it kept fresli, j^reserv- 

 ing the flexibility of life from the 2d of August to the 20th of September, 

 a space of seven weeks. ^ With spiders in such condition there is really 

 no appearance of death. They are unconscious though living, and there- 

 fore make no sham of being dead. 



' J. H. Fabre, Nouveraux Souveniers Entomologiques. Studies upon tlie Instinct and 

 TIaiiits of Insccls, page 210, 1SH2. 



