66 
STRANGE DWELLINGS. 
repeated seven or eight times, and always with the same results, 
so that a further repetition would have been but a useless 
cruelty. The heat given out by the ashes was very trifling, and 
not equal to that which is caused by the noontide sun, a tem- 
perature which the Scorpion certainly does not like, but which 
it can endure without suffering much inconvenience. Gene- 
rally, the Scorpion was dead in a few minutes after the wound 
was inflicted. 
Many of the true spiders are among the burro wers, and, even 
in our own country, it is possible to see a sandy bank studded 
with their silk-lined tunnels. 
D 
There is such a bank that skirts a fir-wood near my house, 
the material being the loosest possible sandstone, scarcely hard 
enough in any place to resist a pinch between the fingers and 
thumb. About an inch or two above the soil, this sandstone is I 
quite excavated by the spiders, and as the sandy sides of their | 
tunnels would fall in were they not supported in some manner, 
every tunnel is carefully lined by a coating of tough webbing, 
very strong, very elastic, very porous, and yet not suffering 
one particle of sand to pass through its interstices. From the 
opening of each burrow a web is spread, looking very much 
like a casting net, with a hole through its middle. From this 
again, radiate a number of separate threads, which extend to 
a considerable distance from the entrance. 
At the very bottom of its silken tunnel the living architect 
lies concealed, its sensitive feet resting on the web, so that it is 
enabled to perceive the approach of the smallest insect that 
crosses the spot which it has so elaborately fortified. It is 
curious to watch the various insects that are caught by different 
species of spiders. The common garden spider ( Epeiro diet- 
dema) enjoys the greatest variety of diet, and the water spider, I 
of which we shall see something in a future page, is also capable 
of varying its food to a considerable extent. The Burrowing 
Spiders, however, of which there are several species, are much 
restricted in their diet, the chief food that is found in their webs 
consisting of small beetles and midges. These spiders belong 
to the family Agelenidse. 
