THE ANT-LION. 187 



circle. Should the stone happen to be round, the balance 

 can be kept only with the greatest difficnlty, as it has to 

 travel with its load upon a slope of loose sand, which is 

 ready to give way at every step ; and often when the 

 insect has carried it to the very brink, it rolls off" its back 

 and tumbles down to the bottom of the pit. This accident, 

 so far from discouraging the ant-lion, only stimulates it to 

 more persevering efforts. Bonnet observed it renew these 

 attempts to dislodge a stone five or six times. It is only 

 when it finds it utterly impossible to succeed, that it 

 abandons the design and commences another pit in a fresh 

 situation. When it succeeds in getting a stone beyond 

 the line of its circle, it is not contented with letting it 

 rest there ; but to prevent it from again rolling in, it goes 

 on to push it to a considerable distance. We may be 

 pardoned for pausing before we give full credence to these 

 details. 



The ant-lion feeds only on the blood or juice of insects ; 

 and as soon as it has extracted these, it tosses the dry 

 carcase out of its den. 



When it is about to change into a pupa, it proceeds in 

 nearly the same manner as the caterpillar of the water- 

 hetonj iRoth. (CiicalUa scrophrdarice). It first builds a case 

 of sand, the particles of which are secured by threads of 

 silk, and then tapestries the whole with a silken web. 

 Within this it undergoes its transformation into a pupa, 

 and in due time it emerges in form of a four-winged fly, 

 closely resembling the dragon-flies (LibeUidce), vulgarly and 

 erroneously called horse-stingers. 



The instance of the ant-lion naturally leads us to con- 

 sider the design of the Author of Nature in so nicely 

 adjusting, in all animals, the means of destruction and of 

 escape. As the larger quadrupeds of prey are provided 

 with a most ingenious machinery for preying on the 

 weaker, so are these furnished with the most admirable 

 powers of evading their destroyers. In the economy of 

 insects, we constantly observe that the means of defence, 

 not only of the individual creatures, but of their larvae 

 and pupae, against the attacks of other insects, and of 



