DEVIOUS PATHS 
apparent foresight and yet such thoughtlessness, at 
such great pains and labor to dig a hole and build 
a cell, and then at times sealing it up without storing 
it with food or laying the egg, half finishing hole 
after hole, and then abandoning them without any 
apparent reason; sometimes killing their spiders, 
at other times only paralyzing them; one species 
digging its burrow before it captures its game, oth- 
ers capturing the game and then digging the hole ; 
some of them hanging the spider up in the fork 
of a weed to keep it away from the ants while they 
work at their nest, and running to it every few min- 
utes to see that it is safe; others laying the insect 
on the ground while they dig; one species walking 
backward and dragging its spider after it, and when 
the spider is so small that it carries it in its mandible, 
still walking backward as if dragging it, when it 
would be much more convenient to walk forward. 
A curious little people, leading their solitary lives 
and greatly differentiated by the solitude, hardly any 
two alike, one nervous and excitable, another calm 
and unhurried; one careless in her work, another 
neat and thorough; this one suspicious, that one 
confiding ; Ammophila using a pebble to pack 
down the earth in her burrow, while another species 
uses the end of her abdomen, — verily a queer little 
people, with a lot of wild nature about them, and a 
lot of human nature, too. 
I think one can see how this development of in- 
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