HUNTING — FISHING — WARS AND EXPEDITIONS. 5 1 



inconceivable tenacity of insects. The abandonment 

 therefore left hope of return. The ant at last met 

 one of his companions, who was also carrying a 

 burden. They stopped, took counsel for an instant, 

 bringing their antennje together, and started for the 

 hillock. The second ant then left his burden, and 

 both together then seized a twig and introduced its 

 end beneath the first load which had been abandoned 

 because of its weight By acting on the free ex- 

 tremity of the twig they were able to use it exactly 

 as a lever, and succeeded almost without trouble in 

 passing their booty on to the other side of the little 

 hillock. It seems to me that these ants who invented 

 the lever are worthy of admiration, and that their 

 ingenuity does not yield to our own. 



I will, finally, give an example of the methods of 

 surmounting a difficulty of another order in utilising 

 captured prey. It is not enough to capture prey, or 

 even to possess the means of utilising the prey when 

 captured. It is sometimes also necessary to prevent 

 the booty being taken possession of by some other 

 member of the same species as the hunter. Spiders 

 are specially liable to this danger, because their victims 

 are noisy when caught. Hudson has described an 

 ingenious device made use of by a species of Pholcus 

 — a quiet inoffensive Spider found in Buenos Ayres — 

 to escape this risk. This spider, though large, is a 

 weak creature, and possesses little venom to despatch 

 a fly quickly. The task of killing it is therefore long 

 and laborious, and the loud outcries of the victim 

 may be heard for a long time, sometimes for ten or 

 twelve minutes. The other spiders in the vicinity are 

 naturally excited by this noise, and hurry out from 

 their webs to the scene of conflict, and the strongest 



