THE ART OF SEEING THINGS 



of my little finger into it. I peered down, and saw 

 the gleam of two small, bead-like eyes. I knew it to 

 be the den of the wolf -spider. Was she waiting for 

 some blundering insect to tumble in? I say she, 

 because the real ogre among the spiders is the fe- 

 male. The male is small and of little consequence. 

 A few days later I paused by this den again and 

 saw the members of the ogress scattered about her 

 own door. Had some insect Jack the Giant-Killer 

 been there, or had a still more formidable ogress, 

 the sand-hornet, dragged her forth and carried 

 away her limbless body to her den in the bank ? 



What the wolf -spider does with the earth it exca- 

 vates in making its den is a mystery. There is no 

 sign of it anywhere about. Does it force its way 

 down by pushing the soil to one side and packing 

 it there firmly? The entrance to the hole usually 

 has a slight rim or hem to keep the edge from 

 crumbling in. 



As it happened, I chanced upon another inter- 

 esting footnote that very day. I was on my way to 

 a muck swamp in the woods, to see if the showy 

 lady's-slipper was in bloom. Just on the margin of 

 the swamp, in the deep shade of the hemlocks, my 

 eye took note of some small, unshapely creature 

 crawling hurriedly over the ground. I stooped 

 down, and saw it was some large species of moth 

 just out of its case, and in a great hurry to find a 

 suitable place in which to hang itself up and give 

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