450 Trans. Acad, Sci. of St. Louis 
sence of the egg henceforth renders the bringing of pro- 
visions useless and absurd? 
‘¢What she does is to bring a second spider whom she 
stores away with the same cheerful zeal as though noth- 
ing untoward had occurred; she brings a third, a fourth 
and others still, each of whom I remove during her 
absence, so that every time she returns from the chase 
the warehouse is found empty. For two days the Pelo- 
poeus’ obstinacy in seeking to fill the insatiable jar per- 
sisted; for two days my patience in emptying the pot 
as she stocked it was equally unflagging. With the 
twentieth victim, persuaded, perhaps, by the fatigue of 
expeditions repeated beyond all measure, the huntress 
considered that the game bag was sufficiently supplied 
and she began most conscientiously to close the cell 
which contained: nothing. 
es . I have suggested that the insect’s rudimen- 
tary ietelligones has practically the same limitations 
everywhere. The accidental difficulty which one insect 
is powerless to overcome, in default of a gleam of judg- 
ment, any other, no matter what its genus or species, 
will be equally unable to overcome.’’ 
In order to test this work, we made similar experi- 
ments on the American mud-daubers, Sceliphron cae- 
mentaritum, Experiments 1 to 19,*** made a few years 
ago, lend much to the substantiation of the later ones, 
20 to 27, which were made after reading Fabre’s account 
and were made directly to test this point. It is fortu- 
nate that these experiments, especially the earlier ones, 
were recorded in sufficient detail to show at least that 
our American mud-dauber is something just a little in 
advance of bundles of stupidity or vehicles of instinct. 
***Journ. Animal Behav. 5:240-248. 1915. 
