SPIDERS —GENERAL INTELLIGENCE. 
219 
some of the already ensnared flies found time and opportunity 
to escape. This game was carried on by me for some weeks, as 
it seemed to me curious. But one day when the spider seemed 
very ravenous, and regularly flew at each fly offered to it, I 
began teasing it. As soon as it had got hold of the fly I pulled 
it back again with the pincers. It took this exceedingly ill. 
The first time, as I finally left the fly with it, it managed to 
forgive me, but when I later took a fly right away, our friend- 
ship was destroyed for ever. On the following day it treated 
my offered flies with contempt, and would not move, and on the 
third day it had disappeared. 1 
Jesse relates the following anecdote, which seems to 
display on the part of a spider somewhat remote adapta- 
tion of means to novel circumstances. He confined a 
spider with her eggs under a glass upon a marble mantel- 
piece. Having surrounded the eggs with web, — - 
She next proceeded to fix one of her threads to the upper 
part of the glass which confined her, and carried it to the further 
end of the piece of grass, and in a short time had succeeded in 
raising it up and fixing it perpendicularly, working her threads 
from the sides of the glass to the top and sides of the piece of 
grass. Her motive in doing this was obvious. She not only 
rendered the object of her care more secure than it would 
have been had it remained flat on the marble, but she was 
probably aware that the cold from the marble would chill her 
eggs, and prevent their arriving at maturity : she therefore 
raised them from it in the manner I have described. 2 
Mr. Belt gives the following account of the intelligence 
which certain species of South American spiders display in 
escaping from the terrible hosts of the Eciton ants : — - 
Many of the spiders would escape by hanging suspended by 
a thread of silk from the branches, safe from the foes that 
sw^armed both above and below. 
I noticed that spiders generally were most intelligent in 
escaping, and did not, like the cockroaches and other insects, 
take shelter in the first hiding-place they found, only to be 
driven out again, or perhaps caught by the advancing army of 
ants. I have often seen large spiders making off many yards 
in advance, and apparently determined to put a good distance 
: Log. oit p. 319. 
2 Gleanings , vol, i. , p, X03* 
