SEPTEMBER. 235 



spiders, lizards, and snakes, knowing creatures all of them, 

 and endlessly amusing. 



Let us consider them in the order named. I was 

 soon compelled to make friends with the spiders, as they 

 straightway became so numerous and fearless that mutual 

 toleration was necessary. Had there been rebellion on 

 either side, the chances were in favor of my discomfiture. 



I had no trouble. Not a nook or corner for several 

 days but was occupied by a web, and often I was forced to 

 destroy these to get at some of my photographic or other 

 apparatus. In a few days the spiders learned where I was 

 most apt to be and what objects in the tent were likely 

 to be disturbed, and retired to the ridge-pole, beneath my 

 table, and behind certain boxes that were constantly 

 opened but never moved from their places. 



This is a bold if not a rash statement. I have said 

 the spiders " learned." Do spiders learn by experience ? 

 Can they be taught ? Let us see. From the very neces- 

 sities of the case spiders must be cunning or they would 

 starve. Their food is not taken by brute force, nor capt- 

 ured by outrunning the pursued insect. As their de- 

 pendence is so largely if not wholly upon strategy, a high 

 degree of intelligence must be accorded them. Spiders 

 have been known to weight their webs with stones that 

 they might be steadied during a gale of wind, and one 

 at least has been known to completely alter its mode of 

 life because of accident making impracticable the ordi- 

 nary methods of food-capture. These more wonderful 

 .evidences of mental strength are too well attested to be 

 doubted, and I was well prepared to find those spiders 

 that crowded my tent equal to all that I have recorded of 

 them. 



As is my wont, I devised various simple experiments 

 to test their cunning, and so whiled away many a lonely 

 hour. Choosing one great gray fellow that had an elab- 



