AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 305 



two, and in spite of all her struggles dragged the object of 

 contestation under the sand. The unfortunate 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 alive along with the treasure dearer to her than 

 her existence ; and it was only by force that Bonnet at length 

 withdrew her from the unequal conflict. But the bag of eggs 

 remained with the assassin: and though he pushed her re- 

 peatedly with a twig of wood, she still persisted in continuing 

 on the spot. Life seemed to have become a burden to her, 

 and all her pleasures to have been buried in the grave which 

 contained the germ of her progeny ! ^ The attachment of this 

 affectionate mother is not confined to her eggs. After the 

 young spiders are hatched, they make their way out of the 

 bag by an orifice, which she is careful to open for them, and 

 without which they could never escape^; and then, like the 

 young of the Surinam toad {Rana pipa), they attach them- 

 selves in clusters upon her back, belly, head, and even legs ; 

 and in this situation, where they present a very singular appear- 

 ance, she carries them about with her and feeds them until 

 their first moult, when they are big enough to provide their 

 own subsistence. I have more than once been gratified by a 

 sight of the former part of this interesting spectacle ; and 

 when I nearly touched the mother, thus covered by hundreds 

 of her progeny, it was most amusing to see them all leap from 

 her back and run away in every direction.^ 



A similar attachment to their eggs and young is manifested 

 by many other species of the same tribe, particularly of the 

 genera Lycosa and Dolomedes. Cluhiona holosericea was found 



1 Bonnet, ii. 435. 2 De Geer, vii. 194. 



3 Dr. Heineken, whose zeal for Entomology as manifested by his valuable 

 communications in spite of ill health to the Zoological Journal shows how great 

 a loss the science sustained by his untimely death, states that having placed a 

 large female Lycosa covered with her young, just hatched, in a cage so con- 

 structed that they could quit it while she could not, he fed her with flies for 

 fifteen days, but never observed her to feed her young ones, nor them to quit 

 their station on her body, nor to seem at all interested or excited when she was 

 engaged in eating. At length, fifteen days after their birth, they quitted the 

 mother and escaped from the cage. Dr. Heineken, however, admits that ob- 

 servations of this kind made on insects in confinement are by no means conclu- 

 sive. (Zoo/. Journ. v. 192.) 



VOL. I. X 



