Wild Life on a Surrey Moor 



eggs carried indoors for them, and, I imagine, carefully 

 deposited in the incubation department. 



Of course, it is not the size of any brain-box but the 

 quality of the material inside it that counts. However, 

 I am bound to confess that my varied experiments upon 

 these creatures, made with a view to learning something 

 of their super-intelligence, have invariably ended in 

 disappointment . 



My wife grew tired of studying wood ants and their 

 ways, and proposed taking a little stroll. She had not 

 proceeded fifty yards, however, before she ran back in a 

 great state of excitement to report a desperate battle in 

 progress between a giant dragon fly and a pigmy spider. 

 The latter had erected its web a palpably flimsy affair 

 between two old grass stems standing dead and bare 

 above the bright spring greenery, and constructed a 

 cunningly hidden parlour under the empty seed-head of 

 one of them. The dragon fly in " taking off " from the 

 edge of the pond had struck the web and torn it to 

 shreds, but in doing so had concentrated its threads in 

 such a way that their combined strength held him 

 struggling upside down, and the spider was attacking 

 might and main. 



It was veritably a case of Jack the Giant-killer and 

 the Monster over again. There swung the enraged 

 giant making desperate but ineffectual efforts to free 

 himself and escape, whilst the wee spider only one- 

 twentieth his size dashed in from time to time and 

 inflicted a deadly bite. In a very short while the dragon 

 fly gave up the ghost, and swung stiff and stark in the 



