AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 239 



observations on the maternal affection exhibited by the common earwig. 

 This curious insect, so unjustly traduced by a vulgar prejudice, — as if the 

 Creator had willed that the insect world should combine within itself 

 examples of all that is most remarkable in every other department of nature, 

 — still more nearly approaches the habits of the hen in her care of her family. 

 She absolutely sits upon her eggs as if to hatch them — a fact which 

 Frisch appears first to have noticed — and guards them with the greatest 

 care. De Geer, having found an earwig thus occupied, removed her into 

 a box where was some earth, and scattered the eggs in all directions. She 

 soon, however, collected them one by one with her jaws into a heap, and 

 assiduously sat upon them as before. The young ones, which resemble 

 the parent except in wanting elytra and wings, and, strange to say, are 

 as soon as born larger than the eggs which contained them, immediately 

 upon being hatched creep like a brood of chickens under the belly of the 

 mother, who very quietly suffers them to push between her feet, and will 

 often, as De Geer found, sit over them in this posture for some hours. ^ 

 This remarkable fact I have myself witnessed, having found an earwig 

 under a stone which I accidentally turned over, sitting upon a cluster of 

 young ones, just as this celebrated naturalist has described. 



We are so accustomed to associate the ideas of cruelty and ferocity 

 with the name of spider, that to attribute parental affection to any of the 

 tribe seems at first view almost preposterous. Who, indeed, could suspect 

 that animals which greedily devour their own species whenever they have 

 opportunity, should be susceptible of the finer feelings ? Yet such is the 

 fact. There is a spider common under clods of earth {Lijcosa saccaia) 

 which may at once be distinguished by a white globular silken bag about 

 the size of a pea, in which she has deposited her eggs, attached to the 

 extremity of her body. Never miser clung to his treasure with more 

 tenacious solicitude than this spider to her bag. Though apparently a 

 considerable incumbrance, she carries it with her every where. If you 

 deprive her of it, she makes the most strenuous efforts for its recovery ; 

 and no personal danger can force her to quit the precious load. Are her 

 efforts ineffectual ? A stupefying melancholy seems to seize her, and, 

 when deprived of this first object of her cares, existence itself appears to 

 have lost its charms. If she succeeds in regaining her bag, or you restore 

 it to her, her actions demonstrate the excess of her joy. She eagerly 

 seizes it, and with the utmost agility runs off with it to a place of security. 

 Bonnet put this wonderful attachment to an affecting and decisive test. 

 He threw a spider with her bag into the cavern of a large ant-lion, a 

 ferocious insect, which conceals itself at the bottom of a conical hole 

 constructed in the sand for the purpose of catching any unfortunate victim 

 that may chance to fall in. The spider endeavored to run away, but was 

 not sufficiently active to prevent the ant-lion from seizing her bag of eggs, 

 which it attempted to pull under the sand. She made the most violent 

 efforts to defeat the aim of her invisible foe, and on her part struggled 

 with all her might. The gluten, however, which fastened her bag, at 

 length gave way, and it separated : but the spider instantly regained it 

 with her jaws, and redoubled her efforts to rescue the prize from her oppo- 

 nent. It was in vain : the ant-lion was the stronger of the two, and in 



' De Geer, iii. 548. 



