THE SPIDER RAVISHERS. 145 



of the anterior part of the abdomen. We were watching the 

 pretty little Diodmti, as they filled their holes with aphides, 

 when we saw her going backward, dragging along a medium- 

 sized spider. Soon she came to an onion flower that was lying 

 on the ground. Here she stopped and, after a moment's hesita- 

 tion, drew her prey in among the blossoms of the cluster so that 

 it was hidden from view. It was not long before she came out 

 and began to fly about near the ground, frequently alighting to 

 poke her head into cracks and to run again and again into little 

 chance holes. Never did an insect behave in a more demented 

 manner, and although there may have been a method in her 

 madness it was difficult to discover it. No hole nor cranny 

 pleased her and back she flew to the onion to see whether her 

 booty was safe. For fifteen minutes she ran and flew now 

 here, now there, hurry and anxiety in every movement, return- 

 ing frequently to reassure herself about the spider. Several 

 times she entered a hole at the base of a weed, not a made nest, 

 but an accidental crevice, and this spot was at length chosen 

 either as a temporary or a final resting place for her spider, since 

 she dragged it from the onion and deposited it here. We tried to 

 capture the wasp, but having failed in this, we dug out the 

 spider. It was three inches down, the hole being deeper than 

 it looked from the outside. There was no egg upon it. Evi- 

 dently the work had not been finished for the restless creature 

 returned fifteen times within an hour to the broken nest, either 

 for the purpose of laying her egg or to remove the spider to 

 another resting-place on her homeward way. 



The spider, which was an Agalena naevia, about two-thirds 

 grown, was dead. We reached this conclusion only after most 

 careful investigation and are satisfied that there was no mistake. 

 We thought, though we may have been mistaken, that both 

 head and abdomen appeared slightly crushed. On the follow- 

 ing day, July fourteenth, we re-examined it, and found the legs 

 drawn up to the body and quite stiff. In the next two days it 

 became dryer and somewhat shrunken, and by the eighteenth 

 it was quite dry. As late as the twenty-third, however, it was 

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