62 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



To these numerous facts I will now add one other, which 

 is sufficiently remarkable to deserve republication for its own 

 sake. I quote the account from the journal Science, in 

 which it appeared anonymously. But finding on inquiry thdt 

 the observer was Mr. S. P. Langley, the well-known astrono- 

 mer, and being personally assured by him that he is certain 

 there is no mistake about the observation, I will now give the 

 latter in his own words. 



"The interesting description by Mr. Larkin {^Science, No. 

 58) of the lifting by a spider of a large beetle to its nest, 

 reminds me of quite another device by which I once saw a 

 minute spider (hardly larger than the head of a pin) lift a 

 house-fly, which must have been more than twenty times its 

 weight, through a distance of over a foot. The fly dangled by a 

 single strand from the cross-bar of a window-sash, and, when it 

 first caught my attention, was being raised through successive 

 small distances of something like a tenth of an inch each ; the 

 lifts following each other so fast, that the ascent seemed 

 almost continuous. It was evident that the weight must have 

 been quite beyond the spider's power to stir by a ' dead lift ; ' 

 but his motions were so quick, that at first it was difficult to 

 see how this apparently impossible task was being accom- 

 plished. I shall have to resort to an illustration to explain it ; 

 for the complexity of the scheme seems to belong less to what 

 we ordinarily call instinct than to intelligence, and that in a 

 degree we cannot all boast ourselves. 



" The little spider proceeded as follows : — 



" a b \?, 2i portion of the window-bar, to which level the fly 

 was to be lifted, from his original position at F vertically 

 beneath a; the spider's first act was to descend halfway to 

 the fly (to d), and there fasten one end of an almost invisible 

 thread ; his second to ascend to the bar and run out to b, 

 where he made fast the other end, and hauled on his guy 



of concepts. In the same connection I may refer to the chapter on " Imagination " 

 in Mental Evolution in Animals, and also to the following pages in Animal /«- 

 telligence :—i2?,-^o ; 181-97, 219-222, 233, 311-335. 337. 338, 340, 348-352, 

 377-385, 397-410, 413-425, 426-436, 445-470, 478-498. 



