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- 

 117 



