52 
ANT-LION. 
get hold of him, he fights, and bites, and struggles, to the 
last. told me of another larva, which he said he 
had met with near Marseilles, called the * Fourmilion,' or 
'ant-lion;' whose operations, if you will have them as an 
episode, may be thus set forth. 
A loose light sand is the favourite soil of the Ant-lion. 
In this he makes his snare, and passes the first part of his 
life. His snare is a round hole, about two inches wide at 
top, and with sloping sides, gradually lessening to a point 
at the bottom, where the tenant lays in wait, his jaws only 
being visible, and the rest of his body hidden beneath the 
sand. The sides of this trap are made of the finest and 
driest sand, which, when an insect of any kind alights on, 
gives way beneath its feet, and so conducts it, in the most 
perfectly natural manner, into the very jaws of its de- 
vourer. It sometimes happens, that a shower has made 
the sand more solid, and better footing than when quite 
loose ; and then the luckless mortal, who has inadvertently 
dropped or flown into the hole, begins to remount the side 
with ease and fancied safety ; but, alas, the safety is only 
fancied ! Mark the deepness of the rogue in hiding : he 
dips his jaws into the sand, and, being a capital marksman, 
jerks it, with certain aim, on the back of the intruder, not 
once only, but again, and again, and again ; and thus 
keeps up such a constant and well-directed fire, that the 
poor creature is at last tired out, and slides into the power 
of its enemy. The ant-lion is about the size of a large 
garden spider, and something like it in shape ; after it has 
fed for five weeks on all the stragglers that were unfortu- 
nate enough to get in its way, it spins itself a white silky 
covering, and changes to a chrysalis, and afterwards to a 
beautiful lace-winged fly, which emerges from the sand like 
a spirit escaping from the tomb. 
