ANT-LIONS 



the Atlantic coast. They prefer warm, sandy sites open 

 to the sun. But I have seen them in a pine wood 

 housed beside a fallen tree in and under which a colony 

 of ants had made their nest. Thus cannily had they 

 pitched their tent near their base of supplies. 



Several specimens of Myrmeleon immaculatus brought 

 from New Jersey to Philadelphia in midsummer (July), 

 permitted me to study their habits at leisure. They 

 were domiciled in a wide bowl filled with their native 

 sand; and being in fine fettle disclosed some of their 

 most interesting traits. The special feature for which 

 Myrmeleon is celebrated in the annals of insects, is its 

 manufacture, or arrangement, rather, of a trapping in- 

 plement by which it gains its living. This is rare among 

 the lower animals, being a marked human characteristic. 

 The spider is conspicuous and almost unique among the 

 inferior orders for this gift, its varied silken snares serv- 

 ing to take its prey, as traps and nets serve the human 

 hunter and fisher. The only other example now re- 

 membered is the net-making caddis-worm, whose inter- 

 esting habits are described in a following chapter. 



The ant-lion's trap is a pitfall in the shape of an 

 inverted hollow cone; and my captives showed quite 

 perfectly their mode of work. Their pit was generally 

 made by a backward movement along a spiral line 

 which gradually closed upon the centre. One may 

 make a good imitation of this by a rapid spiral move- 

 ment with the point of a lead-pencil in a bit of dry, 

 loose sand. The ant-lion while thus at work held itself 

 just beneath the surface of the sand, its free progress 

 through which was aided by the shape of the body, 

 which is broad in the middle and tapers at both ends. 

 Thus nature, in working out her vast projects, even in 



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