204 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 
remarkable in every other department of nature,—still more nearly ap- 
proaches the habits of the hen in her care of her family. She absolutely 
sits upon her eggs as if to hatch them—a fact which Frisch appears first 
to have noticed—and guards them with the greatest care. De Geer, 
having found an earwig thus occupied, removed her into a box where was 
some earth, and scattered the eggs in all directions. She soon, however, 
collected them one by one with her jaws into a heap, and assiduously 
sat upon them as before. The young ones, which resemble the parent 
except in wanting elytra and wings, and, strange to say, are as soon as 
born larger than the eggs which contained them, immediately upon being 
hatched creep like a brood of chickens under the belly of the mother, who 
very quietly suffers them to push between her feet, and will often, as De 
Geer found, sit over them in this posture for some hours.! This remark- 
able fact I have myself witnessed, having found an earwig under a stone 
which I accidentally turned over, sitting upon a cluster of young ones, 
just as this celebrated naturalist has described. 
We are so accustomed to associate the ideas of cruelty and ferocity with 
the name of spider, that to attribute parental affection to any of the tribe 
seems at first view almost preposterous. Who, indeed, could suspect that 
animals which greedily devour their own species whenever they have op- 
portunity, should be susceptible of the finer feelings ? Yet such is the 
fact. There is a spider common under clods of earth (Lycosa saccata) 
which may at once be distinguished by a white globular silken bag about 
the size of a pea, in which she has deposited her eggs, attached to the 
extremity of her body. Never miser clung to his treasure with more 
tenacious solicitude than this spider to her bag. Though apparently a 
considerable incumbrance, she carries it with her everywhere. If you 
deprive her of it, she makes the most strenuous efforts for its recovery ; 
and no personal danger can force her to quit the precious load. Are her 
efforts ineffectual? a stupifying melancholy seems to seize her, and, 
when deprived of this first object of her cares, existence itself appears to 
have lost its charms. If she succeeds in regaining her bag, or you restore 
it to her, her actions demonstrate the excess of her joy. She eagerly 
seizes it, and with the utmost agility runs off with it to a place of security. 
Bonnet put this wonderful attachment to an affecting and decisive test. 
He threw a spider with her bag into the cavern of a large ant-lion, a fero- 
cious insect which conceals itself at the bottom of a conical hole con- 
structed in the sand for the purpose of catching any unfortunate victim 
that may chance to fallin. The spider endeavoured to run away, but was 
not sufficiently active to prevent the ant-lion from seizing her bag of eggs, 
which it attempted to pull under the sand. She made the most violent 
efforts to defeat the aim of her invisible foe, and on her part struggled with 
all her might. The gluten, however, which fastened her bag, at length gave 
way, and it separated: but the spider instantly regained it with her jaws, 
and redoubled her efforts to rescue the prize from her opponent. It was 
in vain: the ant-lion was the stronger of the two, and in spite of all her 
struggles dragged the object of contestation under the sand. The unfor- 
tunate mother might have preserved her own life from the enemy: she had 
but to relinquish the bag, and escape out of the pit. But, wonderful 
example of maternal affection! she preferred allowing herself to be buried 
1 De Geer, iii, 548, 
