WILD LIFE IN CALIFORNIA 



85 



started a hole in it with the point of a lead 

 pencil. The larva took to the hole and soon 

 buried itself from sight. After a day or so I 

 introduced a big fly as food for the prisoner. 

 After a week or so I put in another fly, but 

 after the most careful observation I could 

 not see that the larva had fed on either of 

 them. It certainly had not masticated them, 

 as these insects are supposed to dispose of 

 their victims. Therefore I concluded the larva 

 either did not eat flies or was entering upon 

 the stage of pupation when insects do not 

 eat anything, and I did nothing more than to 

 occasionally moisten the earth in the bottle 

 for a period of seven months. At the end 

 of this time I thought the larva must be dead 

 or pupating. To my great astonishment, when 

 I broke the bottle and opened up the earth 

 it was in neither condition, but very much 

 alive and even larger with its hideous features 

 more developed. Upon being disturbed it 

 opened its huge and fierce-looking mandibles 

 as if in declaration of its willingness for a 

 "scrap." Under natural conditions these beetles 

 in larva form live in holes made horizontally 

 in banks of earth which they never leave until 

 they change to the mature form of beetle. 

 The larva comes to the mouth of entrance of 

 the hole and there, with its head sticking out, 

 awaits the coming of some insect which it 

 may seize and make a meal of. This latter 

 statement is on the authority of other ob- 

 servers, for although I have examined many 

 infested banks I never caught sight of a larva 

 peering out of a hole. The mouths of the 

 holes, with their beveled rims, bear out the 

 statement that the insects do come part way 

 out, but their appearance is probably at night, 

 and not in the daytime when I made my 

 search. The beveling of the edges of the en- 

 trance to the holes is undoubtedly caused by 

 the exserted part of the body of the insect 

 swaying around. But when you consider the 

 steep banks and dependence entirely upon 

 chance for some unfortunate insect to fly to 

 it or crawl over it in such a way as to come 

 within reach of the larval inhabitants, hang- 

 ing out of their windows waiting for a gift of 

 food, it is no more than reasonable to sup- 

 pose that the meals in those domiciles are not 

 only very irregular but seldom served. This 

 supposition would explain the remarkable en- 

 durance exhibited by my omus larva in exist- 

 ing without food while in captivity. Nature, 

 it would seem, in fixing the scope of activi- 

 ties of this particular species of insect, decreed 

 that it should remain withing the limits of its 

 home or hole in the ground while in the 

 larval stage, and at the same time endowed 

 it with compensating power of enduring with- 

 out food, for what seems to human kind, re- 

 markably long periods of time. 



However this may be, let us return to the 

 subject of this sketch. When I first placed 

 the Black Widow in the bottle I used a round 

 paste-board pill box for a stopper, inverting it 

 in the mouth of the bottle, perforating the 

 bottom of the box for air. The box thus placed 

 afforded something of a dark place where 

 she made her retreat and remained the greater 

 part of the time during daylight. At night 

 she would come down and work on a web 



which she spun all around the inside of the 

 bottle, which she eventually connected with 

 threads run on angles across from side to side, 

 making a kind of ladder which she used in 

 going up and down. 



She had the web partially constructed when 

 I inserted the first fly. It soon became en- 

 tang'ed in the spider's net, but the spider did 

 not pounce upon it at once, as I was rather 

 expecting she would. For some moments she 

 remained seemingly indifferent to its pres- 

 ence. She was not yet sufficiently familiar 

 with her new surroundings not to be fright- 

 ened when I gave her the fly. However, 

 shortly after, when the fly began to make a 

 strenuous effort to escape from the web the 

 Black Widow began to move her body up and 

 down, showing that she had taken notice of the 

 presence of the victim. After a few seconds' 

 indulgence in this movement she made a jump 

 for the victim, landing near enough to throw 

 a rope of her webbing apparently freshly spun 

 for the purpose around the body of the fly 

 in such a manner as to bind down its wings. 

 Then in less time than it takes to relate it she 

 made several more wraps around it. In short, 

 the spider quickly made a perfect job of 

 trussing its victim so it could move neither 

 wings nor legs. This work she did with her 

 hind feet, and the fact that her head was 

 away from the point of action was no 

 hindrance in the dexterity of the operation. 

 While engaged in the trussing process she 

 stopped two or three times to turn and bite 

 the victim. The effect was to quiet the 

 struggles of the fly and make the work of 

 binding it up easier. 



Now the Black Widow was ready to take the 

 first meal she had in captivity. She grasped 

 the fly with her third pair of legs, those next 

 to the hind ones (spiders have four pair in- 

 stead of three, as do the true insects), and 

 carried it to her place of retreat in the upper 

 part of the bottle. She began her feast by 

 applying her mouth parts first in one place 

 and then in another about the thorax of the 

 victim, turing the fly around and about quite 

 as easily and dexteriously as a squirrel handles 

 a nut. This procedure occupied a few mo- 

 ments, and whether it was one of examination 

 of fitness for food or for hastening the death 

 of the fly, though that seemed to have been 

 accomplished by the biting when it was first 

 attacked by the spider, I could not say. Ap- 

 parently satisfied that it was all that it should 

 be, the Widow moved down her ladder, this 

 time carrying the fly with her two hind legs. 

 She took a position about half-way down and 

 then began the meal in earnest. She applied 

 the mouth appendage by which she extracted 

 the juices of the fly, apparently between the 

 thorax and abdomen, and there it remained 

 for almost one hour, leaving the inference 

 that she had been feasting for about the same 

 length of time that an epicure in affluent cir- 

 cumstances would give to a meal in a first- 

 class hostelry. After finishing the fly, she 

 left the remains hanging in the web, but the 

 next morning I found the dead fly at the bot- 

 tom of the bottle. And I may state here that 

 the spider uniformly made the same final dis- 

 position of all the dead bodies of the flies 



