382 



AMERICAN SPIDERS AND THEIR SPINNINGWORK. 



within her egg nest. At last the cavity is filled, the circular opening 

 sealed up, and the spiders left literally entombed alive within that clay 

 sarcophagus. 



If one at this stage should break open the mud dauber's cell, he might 

 dispute the statement that the imprisoned spiders are alive. To all ap- 

 pearances they are dead. In point of fact they are simply paralyzed. The 

 effect of the poison injected by the wasp's sting within the tissues of her 

 victim is such that all activity is at once and completely suspended, with- 

 out destroying life. Thus, when the larval waspkin awakes to the pangs 

 of hunger, it finds itself in the midst of a generous supply of the very 

 food which Nature intended for it. The mother whom it is never to 

 know, and who already perhaps has paid the last debt to Nature, had con- 

 sumed her closing days in providing for the offspring which she was 

 never to see. I have found these larvae, fat, white grubs, in the midst 

 of their "preserved meats," feasting thereon, and have wondered at their 



enormous appetite and the greedy vigor with 

 which it was satisfied. (Fig. 324.) 



Thus, before the era of man, Nature, in the 

 person of a wasp, had solved the problem of 

 preserving animal flesh without impairing its 

 value as food. A like discovery by the human 

 species, with due application to the edible do- 

 FIG. 324. A wasp larva feeding upon mestic animals, would solve an important prob- 

 lem in commercial economy which has only 



been distantly approached by the ice chambers within which great trans- 

 portation lines convey butchers' meats. 



It would be interesting to know the nature of the poison which pro- 

 duces such remarkable effects, but one cannot hope that it will ever be 

 procured in sufficient quantity to permit analysis. How long 

 the virus may preserve its peculiar effect before death results, 

 or whether a spider once stung can recover health, and to what 

 extent sensation is retained, have been points of inquiry and of some ex- 

 periment. On two occasions I kept under observation spiders rescued 

 from the jaws of wasps. One specimen was a species of Tubeweaver, 

 which I took from a blue wasp; it lived about two weeks. The other 

 species was a large female Wolf spider, taken by a friend and sent to me 

 October 5th, 1875. It lived until the 17th ; twelve days. During this 

 period the creature remained entirely motionless and the limbs retained 

 any position in which they were placed. These examples indicate that 

 there is no recovery from the poison, and that death is suspended for 

 about two weeks. 



I do not know the exact period required for the development of the 

 wasp egg to a feeding larva, but it is something longer than two weeks. 

 In some cases I have found the spiders within the wasp's nidus dead and 



Wasps' 

 Poison. 



