220 
ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 
between themselves and the foe. I once saw one of tbe false 
spiders, or harvest-men (. Phalangidce ), standing in the midst of an 
army of ants, and with the greatest circumspection and cool- 
ness lifting, one after the other, its long legs, which supported 
its body above their reach. Sometimes as many as five out of 
its eight legs would be lifted at once, and whenever an ant ap- 
proached one of those on which it stood, there was always a 
clear space within reach to put down another, so as to be able 
to hold up the threatened one out of danger. 1 
Mr. L. A. Morgan, writing to 6 Nature ’ (Jan. 22, 1 880), 
gives an account of a spider conveying a large insect from 
the part of the web where it was caught to the 6 larder,’ 
by the following means. The spider first went two or 
three times backwards and forwards between the head 
of the insect and the main strand of the web. After 
this he went about cutting all the threads around the 
insect till the latter hung by the head strands alone. 
The spider then fixed a thread to the tail end, and by 
this dragged the carcass as far on its way to the larder 
as the head strands would permit. As soon as these were 
taut, he made the tail rope fast, went back to the head 
rope and cut it ; then he attached himself to the head 
and pulled the body towards the larder, until the tail rope 
was taut. In this way, by alternately cutting the head 
and tail ropes and dragging the insect bit by bit, he con- 
veyed it safely to the larder. 
But the practical acquaintance with mechanical prin- 
ciples which this observation displays is perhaps not so 
remarkable as that which is sometimes shown by spiders 
when they find that a widely spread web is not tightly 
enough stretched, and as a consequence is to an incon- 
venient extent swayed about by the wind. Under such 
circumstances these animals have been observed to sus- 
pend to their webs small stones or other heavy objects, 
the weight of which serves to steady the whole system, 
(xleditsch saw a spider so circumstanced let itself down to 
the ground by means of a thread, seize a small stone, re- 
mount, and fasten the stone to the lower part of its web, 
sfc a height sufficient to enable animals and men to walk 
1 Naturalist in Nicaragua, p, 19, 
