78 THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER. 



with all the energy of her character, to stock it with spiders. 

 Nothing but spiders will do, and they must be, I understand, 

 of one particular genus, not web-spiders, nor jumpers, nor 

 any sort of house spider, but a fierce hairy-legged brute 

 which lives among grass and runs down its prey. These 

 she hunts out, sparing neither age nor sex. She seeks them 

 in their native haunts, follows them by scent like a blood- 

 hound, and whenever she comes upon one, large or small, it 

 is the work of an instant to spring upon its back seize it by 

 the scruff of the neck, and drive her sting into it. She does 

 not sting it to death, for it is not intended to die at once ; 

 she stings judiciously, just injecting so much poison as will 

 act like an anaesthetic and throw the victim into a comatose 

 state, in which it may linger on for a week or two, and re- 

 main fresh and eatable all the time. She feels no remorse. 

 Remorse has nothing to do with the matter in hand. Her 

 nest is to be stocked. When a sufficient number of be- 

 numbed semi-conscious spiders have been huddled together 

 into the hole, she deposits a single egg in the midst of them, 

 and then she hies her to a place she wots of where there is 

 excellent clay. She brings pellets of this, and plasters up 

 the mouth of the hole skilfully, kneading the clay well with 

 her jaws and forefeet, and singing the while to lighten her 



