222 
ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 
not appearing to be aware that the fact had been observed 
before. This writer is Dr. John Topham, whom the late 
Dr. Sharpey, F.R.S., assured me is a competent observer, 
and who publishes the account in 6 Nature ’ (xi. 18) : — 
A spider constructed its web in an angle of my garden, the 
sides of which were attached by long threads to shrubs at the 
height of nearly three feet from the gravel path beneath. Being 
much exposed to the wind, the equinoctial gales of this autumn 
destroyed the web several times. 
The ingenious spider now adopted the contrivance here 
represented. It secured a conical fragment of gravel with its 
larger end upwards by two cords, one attached to each of its 
opposite sides, to the apex of its wedge-shaped web, and left it 
suspended as a moveable weight to be opposed to the effect of 
such gusts of air as had destroyed the webs previously occupy- 
ing the same situation. 
The spider must have descended to the gravel path for this 
special object, and having attached threads to a stone suited to 
its purpose, must have afterwards raised this by fixing itself 
upon the web, and pulling the weight up to a height of more 
than two feet from the ground, where it hung suspended by 
elastic cords. The excellence of the contrivance is too evident 
to require further comment. 
An almost precisely analogous case, with a sketch, is 
published by another observer in 4 Land and Water,’ Dec. 
12 , 1877 . 
Scorpions. 
Before quitting the Arachnida I must allude to some 
recent correspondence on the alleged tendency of the 
scorpion to commit suicide when surrounded by fire. 
This alleged tendency has long been recognised in 
popular fables, and has been used by Byron as a poetical 
metaphor in certain well-known lines. But until the 
publication of the correspondence to which I allude, no one 
supposed the tendency in question to have any existe ce 
in fact. This correspondence took place in 6 Nature ’ 
(vol. xi.), and as the subject is an interesting one, I shall 
reproduce the more important contributions to it in ex - 
lenso. It was opened by Mr. W. Gr. Biddie as follows : — 
I shall feel obliged if you will record in ‘ Nature ’ a fact with 
