158 INSECTS. 



the posterior. It has six legs, and its mouth is fitted 

 with a forceps, consisting of two in-curved jaws. It 

 looks a most helpless creature, and as if totally unable 

 to catch anything, yet its only food is the juices of 

 other insects. Its pace is very slow, and, strange to say, 

 it can only walk backwards. It has therefore to use 

 artifice to catch its prey ; all open efforts it could pos- 

 sibly bring into play would never provide it a dinner. 



It forms a conical pit, two inches deep, in the soft 

 sand, generally selecting a spot sheltered from the rain 

 by an overhanging bank. In the bottom of the pit it 

 buries itself, and awaits its prey. Very soon some 

 unwary ant stumbles over the edge, and falls or rolls 

 to the bottom, where it is at once seized by the ant- 

 lion's forceps, and retained until all its blood is sucked 

 out. Sometimes the ant escapes the deadly nippers, and 

 struggles to regain the top of the pit, but the ant-lion 

 is ready for such an emergency. Heaping loads of sand 

 on its flat head, it jerks them over and above the poor 

 ant, who, thus assailed, and being on a very crumbling 

 wall of sand, soon comes down again; although I 

 watched them very frequently, I never saw one escape 

 the second time. As soon as the blood has all been 

 sucked from the carcass, the remains are jerked out 

 of the pit. 



