102 A NATURALIST IN CELEBES ch. v 



arrange their falls in perfectly straight lines along the 

 sand immediately vertically helow the line of the roof. 

 I suppose that a number of small insects and other food 

 particles are constantly falling from the attap roofs, and the 

 ant-lions feed upon them, but it would be interesting to know 

 how the ant-lions discover these favourable places. As a 

 rule the ant-lion cannot be seen in his pit, but by a careful 

 examination one can sometimes distinguish his sickle-shaped 

 mandibles at the bottom of it< I was amused to see one day 

 a small boy entertaining himself by fishing for ant-lions. 

 He took a small twig of a shrub that had a very sweet sap, 

 and, breaking a fragment of it away from the rest, but 

 still attached to it by a thin shred of the bark, he lowered 

 it gently into the pit as one would a fishhook into the 

 water. The ant-lion seized the sweet morsel, and was 

 immediately drawn out of the pit by the boy. 



If I were able to record in these pages all the numerous 

 insect pests which visited me in my little hut in Talisse this 

 chapter would have to be increased inordinately in length. 

 The many quaint and curious creatures that fell from my 

 lamp as I sat writing in my journal of an evening might 

 have been made the subject of a separate memoir, if I 

 had had the patience to collect and label them ; and the 

 numerous little beasts I found from time to time in my 

 boxes, bed, and boots might have served me with zoological 

 study for the rest of my life. The two enemies I most 

 dreaded were the white ants and the large brown hairy 

 spider, which Mr. Cambridge tells me is Heteropoda sana- 

 toria, Linn. — ' a spider found in all tropical regions.' 



The danger to be feared from the white ants was that 

 their attacks upon the piles on which my house was built 

 might so weaken them that the house would fall. I had 

 seen houses in the island fall from this cause —in fact, I had 

 often lent my dredging-rope to the natives to pull them up 



