Chapter V: L. K (2)

To be quite plain, Pepsis fights Eurypelma to get his huge, juicy body for food for her young; and Eurypelma fights Pepsis to keep from becoming paralyzed provender. If Pepsis had escaped unhurt in the combat at which Mary and I "assisted," as the French say, as enthralled spectators, we should have seen her drag by mighty effort the limp, paralyzed, spider giant to her nest hole not far distant--a great hole twelve inches deep and with a side chamber at the bottom. There she would have thrust him down the throat of the burrow, and then crawled in and laid an egg on the helpless beast, from which in time would have hatched the carnivorous wasp grub. Pepsis has many close allies among the wasps, all black or steely blue with smoky or dull-bronze wings, and they all use spiders, stung and paralyzed, to store their nest holes with.

"Do the little black and blue wasps hunt the little spiders and the larger ones the big spiders?" asks Mary.

"Exactly," I respond, "and the giant wasp of them all, Pepsis, the queen of the wasp amazons, hunts only the biggest spider of them all, Eurypelma, the tarantula king, and we have seen her do it."

"Well," says Mary, "even if she wants him for her children to eat, it's a real vendetta, isn't it?"

"Indeed it is," I answer, "it's more real, and fiercer, and more relentless, and more persistent than any human vendetta that ever was. For every Pepsis mother in the world is always hunting for Eurypelmas to fight. And not _all_ Corsicans have a vendetta on hand, nor all Kentuckians a feud."

THE TRUE STORY OF THE PIT OF MORROWBIE JUKES

"It seemed that some one was calling to me in a whisper--'Sahib! Sahib! Sahib!' exactly as my bearer used to call me in the mornings. I fancied that I was delirious until a handful of sand fell at my feet. Then I looked up and saw a head peering down into the amphitheater--the head of Dunnoo, my dog-boy, who attended to my collies. As soon as he had attracted my attention, he held up his hand and showed a rope. I motioned, staggering to and fro the while, that he should throw it down. It was a couple of leather punkah-ropes knotted together, with a loop at one end. I slipped the loop over my head and under my arms; heard Dunnoo urge something forward; was conscious that I was being dragged, face downward, up the steep sand-slope, and the next instant found myself choked and half-fainting on the sand-hills overlooking the crater."

And then Mary broke in. We were lying in a sunny warm spot on an open hillside a little way off the road, and I was reading aloud from a favorite author.

"That is a fairy story," said Mary, "and I thought we were not going to read any more fairy stories now that I am grown up."

Mary's idea of being grown up is to be more than three feet eleven inches high and to have her hair no longer in two braids.

"Not exactly a fairy story," I replied. "For Kipling rather prefers soldiers to fairies and machines to caps of invisibility. Of course, though, he wrote the Mowgli stories."

"But those are not fairy stories," interrupted Mary. "Those were about a real boy and real animals only a long way off and different from ours."

"Ah-um, real? Well, perhaps; anyway, the Mowgli animals seem more real than most real animals. But this story of the sand-pit and the man sliding down into it and not being able to get out isn't impossible at all. Only the other people down in the bottom seem a little unusual."

"No, there can't be any such place," said Mary positively, "and as there can't be any such place, nobody could have slid into it or been in the bottom, and so it is a fairy story. Any story that isn't so is a fairy story."

"Well, that makes it easy to tell a fairy story from the other kinds, and I never knew exactly how before. But I once saw a place much like the sand-pit that Morrowbie Jukes slid into, or that Kipling says he slid into. It is on the side of a great mountain in Oregon; Mt. Hood its name is. I had climbed far above timber line, that is, above where all the trees and bushes stop because it is too cold for them to live, and there is only bare rocks and snow and ice, and had sat down to rest near a great snowbank a mile long. As I looked back down the mountain I saw a curious yellowish smoke rising in little puffs and curls. I decided to find out about this smoke on my way down; perhaps it was the beginning of a forest fire, and ought to be put out.

"Well, when I got to it there was no fire; the puffs and curls were not smoke. It was a real Morrowbie Jukes pit; a great crater-like hole in the mountain, with its side so steep that the loose volcanic sand and rocks (for the whole mountain is an old volcano) kept slipping down in little avalanches from which puffs and curls of fine yellow dust kept rising and drifting lazily away. If I had made the mistake of going too close to the edge, I should certainly have started one of these avalanches and gone slipping and sliding, faster and faster, to the very bottom, a thousand feet below."

"My!" said Mary; "and were there horrible people in the bottom, and crows?"

"Well, really, Mary, I couldn't see on account of the dust-smoke."

"Of course there weren't, probably," said Mary thoughtfully and a little wistfully.

"Probably not," I had to reply regretfully.

But a bright thought came to me. I remembered something. Several days before I had tramped along this hillside road near which Mary and I were lying and I had seen--well, just wait. So I said to Mary: "But I know where there is a Morrowbie Jukes pit, several of them, indeed, near here. Sha'n't we go and see them?"

"Why, of course," said Mary rather severely.

"Let us go galloping as Morrowbie Jukes did," said I. So we took hold of hands and as soon as we got out of the chaparral, we went galloping, hop, hop, hoppity, hop, down the road. I must confess that I got out of breath pretty soon and my knees seemed to creak a little. And when a swift motor-car came exploding by, going up the hill, all the people stared and smiled to see an elderly gentleman with spectacles and a long coat hop-hopping along with a yellow-haired red-cheeked little girl in knee skirts. But we don't mind people much! They simply don't know all the things that go with being happy.

Pretty soon--and it was high time, for I had only three breaths left--we came to a place where the road bent sharply around the hillside and was especially broad.

"Now, Mary," I said, "be careful and don't fall in. I'm afraid I could not get you out."

"Fall in where? Get me out of what?" asked Mary, quite puzzled. She was staring about excitedly, looking most of the time down into the canon with its spiry redwood trees pushing far up from the bottom. And then suddenly she saw. She flopped down on her hands and knees in the warm sand by the roadside and cried out, "What funny little holes!"

"Why, Mary," I said with pained surprise. "You don't really mean to call these awful Morrowbie Jukes pits 'funny little holes'! That isn't fair after all we've done to find them. Especially after my galloping all the way right to the very edge of this largest one."

As I spoke I pointed it out with the toe of my shoe, but inadvertently filled it all up by poking a couple of tablespoonfuls of sand and dust into it. But size is quite a relative matter, and for the tiny creatures with whom Mary and I have to deal, the little crater-like holes in the sand of the roadside are large and dangerous pits. We sprawled down on our stomachs among the pits to see what we could see.

Mary saw first. Ah, those bright eyes! My spectacles are rather in the way out-of-doors, I find. But if I keep on getting younger--and I certainly am younger since I got acquainted with Mary--I shall be able soon to leave them at home in my study when I go out to see things.

Mary, then, saw first. What she saw were two very small shining, brown, gently curved, sharp-pointed, sickle-like jaws sticking up out of the loose sand in the very bottom of one of the pits. They moved once, these curved and pointed jaws, and that movement caught Mary's eye.

"It's the dragon of the pit," I cried. "Dig him out!"

So Mary dug him out. He was very spry and had a strong tendency to shuffle backwards down into the hiding sand. But it takes a keen dragon to get away from Mary, and this one wasn't and didn't.

He was an ugly little brute, squat and hump-backed, with sand sticking to his thinly haired body. But he was fierce-looking for all his diminutiveness. Remember again that whether a thing is big or little to you depends on whether you are big or little. This dragon of the sand-pit was little to us. He is terribly big to the ants.

When Mary got him out and had put him down on the sand near the pit, he trotted about very actively but always backwards. He seems to have got so used to pulling backwards against the frantic struggles of his prey to get up and out of the pit, that he can now only move that way. After we watched him a while, we "collected" him; that is, put him into a bottle, with some sand, to take home and see if we could keep him in our room of live things. Then we turned our attention to another crater. It was about three inches across at the top and about two inches deep; a symmetrical little broad-mouthed funnel with the loose sand-slopes just as steep as they could be. The slightest disturbance, a touch with a pencil-point for example, would start little sand avalanches down the slopes anywhere. It is, of course, easy to see how this horrible pit-trap works. And, in fact, in the very next moment we saw actually how it did work.

A foraging brown ant that was running swiftly over the ground plunged squarely over the verge of the crater before she could stop. She certainly tried hard to stop when once over, but it was too late. Slipping and sliding with the rolling sand-grains, down she went right toward those waiting scimitar-like jaws.

Now, these jaws deserve a word of description. Because, horrible as they may seem to the unfortunate ants, they are so well arranged for their particular purpose that they must attract our admiration. The dragon of the pit, ant-lion he is usually called, has no open, yawning mouth behind those projecting jaws, as might be expected. Indeed there is no mouth at all, just a throat, thirsty for ant blood! The slender scimitar jaws have each a groove on the concave inner side, and down this groove runs the blood of the struggling victim, held impaled on the sharp points of the curving mandibles. The two fine grooves lead directly into the throat, and thus there is no need of open mouth with lips and tongue, such as other insects have.

"But see," cried Mary, "the ant has stopped sliding. It is going to get out!"

Ah, Mary, you are not making allowance for all the resources of this dreadful dragon of the pit. Not only is the pit a nearly perfect trap, and the eager jaws at the bottom more deadly than any array of spikes or spears at the bottom of an elephant pit, but there is another most effective thing about this fatal dragon's trap, and that is this: it is not merely a passive trap, but an active one. Already it is in action. And Mary sees now how hopeless it is with the ant. For a shower of sand is being thrown up from the bottom of the pit against the ant and it is again sliding down. The dragon has a flat, broad head and powerful neck muscles, and has wit enough to shovel up and hurl masses of dry sand-grains against the victim on the loose slopes. And this starts the avalanche again, and so down slides the frantic ant.

What follows is too painful for Mary and me to watch and certainly too cruel to describe. But one must live, and why not ant-lions as well as ants? If truth must be told, many ants have as cruel habits and as bloodthirsty tastes as the ant-dragon. Indeed, more cruel and revolting habits. For ants have a gastronomic fondness for the babies of other ants, which is a fondness quite different from that which they ought to have. It means that they like these babies--to eat. Some communities of ants, indeed, spend most of their time fighting other communities just to rob them of their babies, which they carry off to their own nests and use in horrible cannibalistic feasts.

Mary and I had seen enough of the Morrowbie Jukes pits. So we went back to our little open sunny spot in the chaparral on the hillside and lay quiet and silent for a long time. Then Mary murmured, "I wonder how the ant-lion digs its pit."

"I can tell you, Mary," I replied. "For a man who once saw one digging told me. It is this way: First he makes a circular groove the full circumference of the top of the pit. Then he burrows into the sand inside of the groove and piles sand-grains on top of his flat, horny, shovel-like head with his fore feet. This sand he tosses over the groove so that it will fall outside. He works his way all around the groove, doing this over and over, and then makes another groove inside the first, and digs up and tosses the sand out as before. And so on, groove after groove, each inside the one made before, thus gradually making a conical pit with the sides as steep as the loose sand will lie. The pit must always be made in a dry sandy spot, and is usually located in a warm sunny place at the foot of a large rock. This man said that it is easy to get the ant-lions to dig pits in boxes of sand in the house, and so we can try with our 'collected' fellow."

Mary was silent some moments. Then she said softly, "But how will he get anything to eat?"

"Why," said I, "of course we can give him--" Mary looked up at me in a special way she has. I go on, more slowly, but still without very much hesitation: "But, of course, we sha'n't do that, shall we?"

And Mary said quietly: "No, we sha'n't."

We rested our chins on our hands and lay still, looking down over the chaparral-covered hillside and far out across the hazy valley. On the distant bay were little white specks, small schooners that carry wood and tan-bark and hay from the bay towns to San Francisco; and across the blue bay lifted the bare, brown mountains of the Coast Range, with always that gleaming white spot of the Observatory a-tiptop of the highest peak. It was a soft, languid, lazy day. Such a peace-giving, relaxing, healing day! And we were so enveloped by it, Mary and I, that we simply lay still and happy, with hardly a word. I had, of course, intended to give Mary an informing lecture about how the ugly, horrid ant-lion finally stops preying on ants and rolls himself up in a neat little silk-and-sand ball, and changes into a beautiful, slender-bodied, gauzy-winged creature without any resemblance at all to its earlier incarnation. But I didn't. It was too fine a day to spoil with informing lectures.

And so Mary and I lay still and happy. Finally it was time to go. As we went down the road we passed again the place of the pits, and Mary looked once more at the neat little craters with their patient waiting jaws at the bottom.

"I wonder," she said, musingly, "if Mr. Kipling ever saw an ant-lion pit."

"I wonder," said I.

ARGIOPE OF THE SILVER SHIELD

Argiope of the Silver Shield is the handsomest spider that Mary and I know. Do you know a handsomer? Or are you of those who have prejudices, and hold all spiders to be ugly, hateful things? We are so sorry for you if you are, for that means you can never enjoy having a pet Argiope. The truth is, Mary and I like clever and skillful people, but when we can't find that kind, we rather prefer clever and skillful spiders and wasps or other lowly beasties to the other sort of people, which shows just how far a fancy for nature may lead one.

It _is_ rather bad, of course, to prefer to chum with a spider, even such a wonderfully handsome and clever one as Argiope, instead of with a human soul. But that isn't our situation exactly. We prefer human souls to anything else on earth, but not human stomachs and livers and human bones and muscles and sick human nerves. And, someway, too many people leave on one an impression of bowels or sore eyes rather than one of mind and soul. So we rush to the fields or woods or roads after such an experience and live a while with the keen bright eyes, the sensitive feelers, the dexterous feet and claws and teeth, and the sharp wits of the small folk who, while not human, are nevertheless inhabitants and possessors of this earth, side by side with us, and are truly our blood-cousins, though some incredible number of generations removed.

Mary and I scraped acquaintance with our Argiope in a cypress-tree. That is, Argiope had her abiding-place there; she was there on her great symmetrical orb-web, with its long strong foundation lines, its delicate radii and its many circles with their thousands of tiny drops of viscid stuff to make them sticky. In the center was the hub, her resting-place, whence the radii ran out, and where she had spun a broad zigzaggy band of white silk on which she stood or sat head downward. Her eight long, slender, sensitive legs were outstretched and rested by their tips lightly on the bases of the taut radii so that they could feel the slightest disturbance in the web. These many radii, besides supporting the sticky circles or spiral, which was the real catching part of the web, acted like so many telegraph lines to carry news of the catching to waiting Argiope at the center.

I have said that Mary and I think Argiope of the Silver Shield the most handsome spider we know. There are, however, other Argiopes to dispute the glory with our favorite; for example, a golden-yellow-and-black one and another beautiful silver-and-russet one. Other people, too, may fancy other spiders; perhaps the little pink-and-white crab-spiders of the flower-cups, or the curious spiny Acrosomas and Gasteracanthas with their brilliant colors and bizarre patterns and shape. Others may like the strawberry Epeira, or the diadem-spider, or the beautiful Nephilas. There are enough kinds and colors and shapes of spiders to satisfy all tastes. But we like best and admire most the long-legged, agile, graceful Argiopes, and particularly her of the silver shield. Her full, firm body with its flat, shield-shaped back, all shining silver and crossed by staring black-and-yellow stripes, the long tapering legs softly ringed with brown and yellow, the shining black eyes on their little rounded hillock of a forehead, and the broad, brown under body with eight circular silver spots; all go to make our Argiope a richly dressed and stately queen of spiders. But the royal consort--O, the less said of him, the better. A veritable dwarf; insignificant, inconspicuous and afraid for his life of his glorious mate. How such a queen could ever--but there, how tiresome, for that is what gets said of most matches, royal or plebeian.

Mary and I brought Argiope in from her home in the cypress-tree and put her in a fine, roomy, light and airy cage, where she could live quietly and unmolested by enemies, and where we could see to it that she should not lack for food. There are many of the small creatures with which we get acquainted that do not object at all to being brought into our well-lighted, well-ventilated, warm vivarium--that means live-room. Creatures of sedentary habits, and all the web-making spiders are of course that, ought not to object at all and usually do not seem to. For they get two things that they cannot be sure of outside: protection and plenty of food. Argiope seemed perfectly content and settled right down to spinning a glistening new web, a marvel of symmetry and skillful construction, in her roomy cage, and in a day or two was seated quietly but watchfully on the broad-banded hub in the center, with her toes on her telegraph lines, ready for good news. It was, of course, our duty to see that she was not disappointed.

The message she wanted was from some struggling fly fastened anywhere in the broad expanse of web. So we tossed in a fly. It buzzed about a moment, then blundered into the web which it shook violently in its struggle to escape. Argiope rushed at once out upon the web.

"How can she run about on the sticky web without getting caught, too?" interrupts Mary.

I think a moment, then with some dignity reply: "Pretty soon, please, Mary."

Argiope, I repeat, rushed at once out upon the web, seized the fly in her jaws and ran back to the hub with it, where she appeared to wet it all over, squeeze it into a ball and then proceed to feed upon it, holding and manipulating it skillfully all the time in her jaws. Evidently Argiope was very hungry, for as you will see, this is not her usual way of taking care of her prey.

"Now, Mary, what was it you asked?"

"Oh, just how the spider can run around so fast on the web without sticking to it and getting caught or tearing it all to pieces."

"Ah,--ah, yes. Well, Mary, I don't know! that is, exactly; or, well not even very close to exactly. But she does it, you see."

"Yes, I see," said Mary, demurely, and--can it be that Mary is slightly winking one eye? I do hope not.

"Of course you know, Mary, that the web is made of two kinds of silk or rather two kinds of lines? Oh, you didn't know?" Mary has shaken her head.

"Well it is," I continue, with my usual manner of teacher-who-knows somewhat restored again. "The foundation lines, the radii and a first set of circles are all made of lines without any sticky stuff on them. As you see"--and I touch my pencil confidently to a radius, with the manner of a parlor magician. "Then the spider, on this foundation, spins in another long spiral, the present circles of the web, which is liberally supplied with tiny, shining droplets of viscid silk that never dries, but stays moist and very sticky all the time. This is the true catching part of the web."

"We surely must watch her spin a web sometime," breaks in eager Mary.

"We certainly must," say I, and continue. "Now perhaps when Argiope runs out on the web from her watching-place at the hub, she only puts her long delicate feet on the unsticky radii. Or perhaps her feet are made in some peculiar way so that they do not stick to the circles. As a matter of fact, a spider's foot is remarkably fashioned, with curious toothed claws, and hosts of odd hairs, some knobbed, some curved and hook-like, and some forming dense little brushes. But after all, Mary, the truth is, I don't know really how it is that spiders can run about over their webs without getting stuck to them."

After my long discursus about web-making and spider's feet, it seemed time to give Argiope another fly. Indeed her bright little black eyes seemed to Mary to be shining with eagerness for more fly, although she still had the remains of the first one in her jaws--gracious, Argiope's jaws, please, not Mary's!

So we tossed in another fly. We hope you won't think this cruel. But flies are what Argiope eats, and if she was out in the garden, she would be catching them, and, what is worse, they would not be the disgusting and dangerous house-flies and bluebottles that we feed her, but all sorts of innocent and beautiful little picture-winged flower-flies and pomace-flies and what not. House-flies and stable-flies and bluebottles are truly dangerous because they help spread human diseases, especially typhoid fever. So if we are to live safely they should be killed. Or, better, prevented from hatching and growing at all.

So we tossed in another fly. Argiope immediately dropped the nearly finished first fly into the web, ran out to the new one and pounced on it, seizing it with her fore legs. Then she doubled her abdomen quickly underneath her and there issued from the spinnerets at its tip a jet, a flat jet of silk, which was caught up by the hind feet and wrapped around the fly as it was rolled over and over by the front feet. She tumbled it about, all the time wrapping it with the issuing band of silk, until it was completely enswathed. Then she left it fastened in the web, went back to the hub, and resumed her feeding on the first fly. But soon she finished this entirely, dropped the wreck out of the web and went out and got the second fly, bringing it back to the hub to eat.

"But why," asked Mary, "does Argiope wrap the fly up so carefully in silk? Why not just kill it by biting, and then leave it in the web until she wants it?"

"Perhaps," I answer, "she wants to make it helpless before she comes to close quarters with it. You notice she holds it away from her body with her fore feet and pulls the silk band out far with her hind feet so that her body does not touch the fly at all while she wraps it. Perhaps she is not sure that it isn't a bee or some other stinging insect. It buzzes loud enough to make me think it a bee."

So Mary and I decided to try some experiments with our Argiope to find out, if possible, first, if she could tell a bee from a fly, and second, if so, whether she treated it differently, and third, why she wraps her prey up so carefully before coming to too close quarters with it. We feel quite proud of these experiments because we seemed to be doing something really scientific; and we know that Experimental Zoology, that is, studying animals by experimenting with them, is quite the most scientific thing going nowadays among professional naturalists. So here are our notes exactly as we wrote them during our experimenting. This is, of course, the correct manner for publishing real scientific observations, because it gives the critical reader a chance to detect flaws in our technique!

OUR NOTES ON THE BEHAVIOR OF ARGIOPE

"Nov. 18, 4:45 P.M.; released a fly in the cage. The spider pounced upon it, seized it with fore and third pair of legs, threw out a band of silk and enswathed it, tumbling it over and over with her hind feet about thirteen times, hence enswathed it in thirteen wrappings of silk. The fly was then disconnected from the web, the spider making but little attempt to mend the gap. It was carried to the hub and eaten. While the feast was going on, a honey-bee [with sting extracted; we didn't want to run any risks with Argiope!] was liberated in the cage. As soon as it touched the web, the spider was upon it, throwing out a band of silk in a sheet a quarter of an inch broad. ['Drawing out' would be more accurate, for the spinnerets cannot spurt out silk; silk is drawn out and given its band character by lightning-like movements of the comb-toothed hind feet.] With her hind legs Argiope turned the bee over and over twenty-five or twenty-six times, thus enswathing it with twenty-five or twenty-six wrappings of the silken sheet.

"No sooner was the bee enswathed than a second bee was liberated in the cage and caught in the web. This was treated by the spider like bee No. 1.

"Nov. 20, 8:15 A.M.; Argiope perfectly still in center of hub, feeding on bee No. 2. The only thing that reveals the feeding is a slight moving of the bee's body as the juices are sucked up. Remains of bee No. 1 dropped to the bottom of the cage.

"Fed all day, 8:15 A.M. to 5 P.M., on bee No. 2.

"At 2:30 P.M., a box-elder bug, which is very ill-smelling, was thrown into the web. Argiope did nothing for three minutes, then went out on the web to it and wrapped, making five complete turns; then went away. Probably not hungry, as she has had two bees and a fly in three days.

"Nov. 21, 8:15 A.M.; box-elder bug finished during last night. Old web replaced by a new one with twenty-nine radii, eleven complete spirals and several partial spirals. The hub is formed of fine irregular webbing about an inch and a half in diameter, without the viscid droplets that cover the spirals. An open space of about a half-inch intervenes between the hub and the beginning of the spirals.

"4:30 P.M.; liberated a fly in the cage. Argiope pounced upon it and began to eat immediately, not taking time or trouble to enswath it.

"While the fly was being devoured, we liberated a strong-smelling box-elder bug in the cage. It flew into the web. Argiope, by a quick movement, turned on the hub toward the bug and stood in halting position for eight seconds, then approached the bug slowly, hesitated for a second or two, then wrapped it about with five wrappings, halted again, and finally finished with five more wrappings. The bug was then attached to the web where it had first touched, the spider passing back to the center and resuming her meal.

"When the fly was finished, Argiope walked over to the bug, grasped it in her mandibles, walked up to the hub, turned herself about so that her head was downward, manipulated the bug with her fore and third pair of feet until it seemed to be in right position for her with reference to the hub of the web, and began to feed.

"5 P.M.; bee liberated in cage _with sting not extracted_. Argiope leaped instantaneously to the spot where it was caught, enswathed it with great rapidity thirty-seven times, then bit at it, and enswathed it five times more, making forty-two complete wrappings in all, then left it fastened in the web and resumed feeding upon the bug. All the time she was wrapping it, Argiope kept her body well clear of the bee's body, the spinnerets being fully one-half an inch from the bee, making the broad band of issuing silk very noticeable. In biting it, which she seemed to do with marked caution, she of course had to bite through the silken covering.

"A few minutes later a second bee, with sting, was liberated in the cage, caught in the web and rapidly pounced on by the spider. As before, she turned it over and over with great rapidity, using apparently all of her legs. She enswathed it fifty times, bit it, and then wrapped it with five more silken sheets, making fifty-five wrappings in all. Leaving it hung to the web, she went back to the bug.

"Before Argiope had reached the bug, bee No. 3 was caught in the web at the exact spot where bee No. 2 was hung up. In its efforts to disentangle its feet, it shook the whole web violently. In spite of the violent vibration of the web, Argiope pursued her course to the bug at the hub of the web, adjusted herself with head downward, and resumed feeding.

"Query: Did Argiope think the web-shaking due to futile struggles of the well-wrapped bee No. 2, and hence needing no attention?

"Vibration of the web continued. After several seconds had elapsed, Argiope seemed suddenly to realize that her efforts were called for out on the web, for she pounced down as rapidly as before and rolled and tumbled _both bees together_, enswathing both in the same sheet of silk, never stopping until she had given them fifty-five wrappings. After biting twice, she wrapped them with five more turns, bit again, and wrapped again with seven more turns, making sixty-seven in all. Argiope then returned to her bug.

"Query: Does Argiope distinguish bees from flies?

"Further query: Does Argiope distinguish bees _with stings_ from bees with _stings extracted_?

"Nov. 22, 9:45 A.M.; Argiope feeding at hub on bees Nos. 2 and 3 introduced into cage yesterday afternoon. With her right second leg she holds taut a line connected with bee No. 1.

"10:25 A.M.; packet dropped to the bottom of the cage, the juices of only one of the bees having been sucked out. The web is constructed at an angle so that anything dropped from the center falls free of it.

"5 P.M.; began feeding again on bee No. 1.

"Nov. 23, 9:30 A.M.; another bee released in cage, caught in web and enswathed approximately thirty turns by Argiope.

"Nov. 25, 8:30 A.M.; the web has been destroyed during the night.

"Nov. 26, Argiope has made an entirely new web.

"Nov. 30, 2 P.M.; gave Argiope a bee with sting. It was wrapped forty-seven times, but not so expeditiously as has been her wont. Later another bee was liberated in the cage, caught and wrapped about forty-five times.

"Dec. 2, 11 A.M.; the body of a live bee was bathed in fluid from the freshly crushed body of a box-elder bug [very malodorous], and the bee liberated in Argiope's cage, and soon caught in the web. The bee was not very lively and did not shake the web violently, but Argiope rushed to it without hesitation, wrapped it with twenty-five turns of silk and returned to the hub of the web.

"Dec. 3; Argiope stayed all day in the upper part of the web, on foundation lines, with head downward.

"Dec. 5; yesterday Argiope moved down to her normal place on the hub. To-day she is on the hub, but in reversed position [head up], and with legs bent and limp, not straight out and stiffened as usual.

"Dec. 6; Argiope hung all day from foundation lines of upper part of web, in reversed position [head up], with legs limp and bent.

"Dec. 7; Argiope hanging by first and second right legs, from upper part of web; barely alive.

"Dec. 8; Argiope dead."

THE ORANGE-DWELLERS

An entire colony of those strange little people, the Orange-dwellers, were killed in our town yesterday morning. And not a newspaper reporter found it out! Just one of the Orange-dwellers escaped, and as Mary and I were the means of saving his life, and are taking care of him as well as we can (Mary has him now on a small piece of orange-rind in a pill box), he has told us the story of his life and something about the other orange-dwelling people. Some of the Orange-dwellers live in Mexico; some live in Florida, and some in California; in fact they are to be found wherever oranges grow. Of course, you have guessed already that the Orange-dwellers are not human beings; they are not really people; they are insects.

The name of the Orange-dweller we had saved, and with whom we became very well acquainted, is so long and strange that I shall tell you merely his nickname, which is Citrinus. The oranges on which Citrinus and a great many of his brothers and sisters and cousins lived grew in Mexico, and when these oranges were ripe, they were gathered and packed into boxes and sent to our town. Imagine if you can the fearful strangeness of it! To have one's world plucked from its place in space, wrapped up in tissue-paper, and packed into a great box with a lot of other worlds; then sent off through space to some other place where enormous giants were waiting impatiently for breakfast! When Citrinus's world reached our town, one of these giants, who is my brother, took it up, and saying, "See, what a specked orange," straightway began unwittingly to kill all of the Orange-dwellers on it by vigorously rubbing and scraping it. For Citrinus and his companions were the specks! That is all an Orange-dweller seems to be when carelessly looked at; simply a little circular, scale-like, blackish or reddish-brown speck on the shining surface of the orange, his world. You can find the Orange-dwellers almost any morning at breakfast.

When my brother began to scrape off the specks, I hastily interfered, but only in time to save one of the little people, Citrinus, whom, as I have said, Mary has since faithfully cared for. He will soon die, however, for he has lived already nearly three months, and that is a ripe age for an Orange-dweller. But he has had time enough to tell me a great deal about his life, and as it is such a curious story, and is undoubtedly true, I venture to repeat it here to you. As a matter of fact I must confess--still Mary says that _of course_ Citrinus can talk, because he talks with other Orange-dwellers later in the story, and so of course can talk to us now.

Citrinus has lived for almost his whole life on the orange on which we found him. His mother lived on one of the fragrant leaves of the tree on which the orange grew. She was, as Citrinus is now, simply a reddish-brown circular speck on the bright-green orange-leaf; and because she couldn't walk, she had to get all her food in a peculiar way. She had a long (that is, long for such a tiny creature), slender, pointed hollow beak or sucking-tube, which she thrust right into the tender orange-leaf, and through which she sucked up the rich sap or juice which kept flowing into the leaf from the twig it hung on. She had thus a constant supply of food always ready and convenient; whenever she was hungry she simply sucked orange-sap into her mouth until she was satisfied. This is the way all the Orange-dwellers get their food, the very youngest of the family being able to take care of itself from the day of its birth. They never taste any other kind of food but the juice from the leaf or twig or golden orange on which they live.

Citrinus is one of a large number of brothers and sisters, more than fifty indeed, who were hatched from tiny reddish eggs which the mother laid under her own body. Before laying the eggs, Citrinus's mother had built a thin shell or roof of wax over her back, and after the eggs were laid she soon died and her body shriveled up, leaving the eggs safely housed under the waxen roof. When the baby Orange-dwellers were hatched, each had six legs and a delicate little sucking-beak projecting from his small plump body. Citrinus and his brothers and sisters scrambled out from under the wax shell and started out each for himself to explore the world. First, however, each thrust his beak into the leaf and took a good drink of sap. Then they were ready to begin their journeying. But a terrible thing happened!

Just as Citrinus was pulling his beak out of the soft leaf, he saw a great six-legged beast, in shape like a turtle, with shining red-and-black back and fearful snapping jaws. On each side of its head, which it moved slowly from side to side, it had an immense eye, which looked like a hemispherical window, with hundreds of panes of glass in it. The beast's legs were large and powerful, and on each foot there were two claws, each of them as long as the whole body of Citrinus. Truly this was an appalling sight, and all of the little Orange-dwellers ran as fast as they could, which, unfortunately, wasn't very fast. The beast leisurely caught up in its great jaws one after another of Citrinus's brothers and sisters, and crushed and tore their tender bodies to pieces and ate them!

Now this beast, which seemed so large to Citrinus, was what is to us a very small and pretty insect, one of the lady-bird beetles. These beetles care for no other food than plump Orange-dwellers and other equally toothsome small insects; and instead of being sorry for its victims, we are glad it eats them! This seems very cruel indeed, but there are so many, many millions of the Orange-dwellers all sucking the juice of orange-trees that although they are so small, and each one drinks so little sap, yet altogether they do a great amount of damage to the orange-trees, often killing all the trees in a large orchard. So the lady-birds are a great help to the orange-growers.

Little Citrinus escaped from the Beetle by crawling into a small, dark hole in the surface of the leaf; but he was badly frightened. This was his first experience with the terrible dangers of the world, with the struggle for life, which is going on so bitterly among the people of his kind, the insects. For although there would seem to be enough plants and trees to serve as food for all of them, many insects find it easier or prefer to eat other insects than to live on plant food. Now because the insects which live on plant food do injury to our fruit-trees and vegetables and grain crops by their eating, we call them injurious insects; while we call the insect-eating kinds beneficial insects, because they destroy the injurious insects.

But little Citrinus didn't look at the matter at all in this light. He thought the lady-bird beetle a very cruel and wicked being, and resolved to warn every Orange-dweller he met in his travels to beware of the cruel, turtle-shaped beast with the shining black-and-red back. As he wandered on from leaf to leaf along the tender twigs in the top of the tree, he met many other Orange-dwellers, whom he would have told all about the Beetle, but he found that all of them had had experiences as sad as his; in fact he soon learned that of all the Orange-dwellers who are born, only a very, very few escape the Beetles and other devouring beasts who pursue them. And he was highly indignant when one shrewd Orange-dweller told him that it really was a good thing for the race of Orange-dwellers that so many of them were killed. For, the shrewd Orange-dweller said, if all of us who are born should live and have families, and not die until old age came on, there would soon be so many of us that we should eat all the orange-trees in the world, and then we should all starve to death. And this is quite true.

Finally Citrinus came to a remarkable being, a very beautiful being indeed. It had two long, slender, waving feelers on its head, four large ball-shaped eyes, and, strangest of all, two delicate gauzy wings. This beautiful creature greeted Citrinus kindly and asked him where he was going. Citrinus, who was at first a little afraid of the strange creature, was reassured by its kind greeting, and answered simply, "I don't know. My brothers and sisters were all eaten by the Beetle; my father and mother I have never seen; and no one has told me where to go."

The stranger smiled a little sadly and said, "That is the common story among us Orange-dwellers. Our fathers and mothers always die before we are born. It is a great pity. Yes, before my little Orange-dweller children are born--"

"What," cried Citrinus, "are you an Orange-dweller; you, who are so different from me?"

"Indeed I am," replied the gauzy-winged creature. "I am an old Orange-dweller. Oh, I know it seems strange to you," he continued, noticing the look of astonishment on Citrinus's face, "but some day you will look just like me. You will have wings, and be able to fly; and will have long feelers on your head to hear and to smell with, and big eyes to see all around you with. You will have some strange experiences, though, before you become like me."

"But as I had started to say, we fathers, and the mothers too for that matter, always die before you youngsters are hatched out of your eggs. Now I shall probably die to-morrow or next day, because I have lived three days already, and that is a long time to live without eating."

Little Citrinus could hardly believe his senses. It was so wonderful. "But why don't you eat," urged Citrinus, who felt very badly to think of any one's going without food for three days. He always took a drink of sap every few minutes.

"Why, how absurd," replied the winged Orange-dweller, "don't you see I have nothing to eat with? No sucking-beak, no mouth at all. When I get my wings and my four eyes, I lose my mouth, and can't eat or drink any more."

This was incredible; but when Citrinus looked at the head of his companion, he saw it was perfectly true. He had no mouth. Citrinus gently waved his little sucking-beak, to be sure he still had it. Suddenly he began to cry; a sad thought had come to him. "And did my mother starve to death too?" he sobbed.

"Not at all, little one," rather impatiently exclaimed the other. Little Citrinus seemed to know so very little, indeed. "Your mother was not at all like me. When she was full-grown she had no wings, no legs, and no eyes, but she had a very long beak, and could suck up a great deal of orange-sap. If you will listen and not interrupt, I will tell you how we Orange-dwellers grow. When we are hatched from our eggs we are all alike, brothers and sisters. We each have a plump little body, six legs, two eyes, and a sucking-beak to get food with. We walk about for a few days, and finally stop on some nice green leaf or juicy orange, and stick our beaks far in and go to sleep, or do something very like it. We never walk about any more. Indeed, if you are a girl Orange-dweller you never leave this spot, but live all the rest of your life and die here. However, I am getting too far along in my story. While we are asleep we shed all of our skin, fold it up into a little ball or cushion and put it on our backs, together with some wax which comes out of small holes in our bodies. While shedding our skin we make a great change in our bodies. We lose our legs! So we simply remain where we went to sleep, with our beaks stuck into the leaf, sucking the sap. After a few days we go to sleep again, and again we shed our skins and fold them on our backs. But at this time something even more wonderful than before happens to our bodies. That is, to the bodies of the boy Orange-dwellers. For this time we lose our sucking-beaks, but we regain our six legs, and in addition we get a second pair of eyes, we find on our heads a pair of long, slender, hairy feelers, and, most pleasing of all, we have been provided with a pair of wings. Our wings are not yet full-grown or ready to fly with, so we still remain quietly in our resting-place for a few days longer, when we shed our skin once more, and then fly away, looking just as I do now. Our sisters, though, when they shed their skins the second time, make no change in their bodies, except to grow larger. They remain with their sucking-beaks thrust into the leaf. They keep increasing the size of the wax scale or shell over their backs, until they are entirely covered by it. Now they look just as your mother did. From above, all one can see is the flat circular wax scale with two spots on it, where the folded-up cast skins are. Underneath the scale lies the Orange-dweller, with its sucking-beak stuck into the sap, but with no legs or wings or long, hairy feelers. After a while she lays a lot of eggs under her body, and then dies. And soon the new family is born. Now this is the way we grow, and all of the wonderful things which have happened to me will happen to you,--if the Beetle does not get you."

With that the winged Orange-dweller flew away, and little Citrinus was left alone, wondering over the strange story. After taking a drink of sap from the leaf on which he was standing, he wandered aimlessly about until he came to a large yellow ball hanging from the branch, which gave out a delightful odor. Scrambling down the slender stem by which it was suspended, he walked out on to the shining surface of the orange; for, of course, that is what the yellow ball was. He tried a drink of sap from the ball and found it delicious. He decided to stay on the ball, the more readily as he was getting rather tired with his long traveling, and a sort of sleepy feeling was coming over him. So thrusting his beak far into the ball, he went to sleep. How long he slept he doesn't know, but when he awoke he could hardly believe his senses. He had no legs; and on his back there was a thin shell of wax and a little packet. He realized, too, that he was bigger than he was before he went to sleep. Then the strange story told him by the winged Orange-dweller came back to him, and he knew that the stranger had told the truth. The first great change had happened. He was delighted, for he thought it would be very pleasant to have wings and fly about wherever he wished, to see the world.

Suddenly a great shock came: his World trembled, then shook violently, and, with a quick wrench, started to move swiftly through space. Then came a stop, a series of shocks and curious whirlings, and then a filmy-white cloud settled down over it all, shutting out the sunlight and the blue sky. Finally there came a few more shocks and wrenches, and then total darkness and silence. Citrinus had held on to his world all through this, because his beak was still thrust into the fragrant surface, and now he felt thankful that he had come alive through these series of world catastrophes and convulsions and still had all the food he could possibly use.

After a few days, when Citrinus's world all nicely wrapped in tissue-paper and packed in a box with ninety-nine other similar worlds had traveled a thousand miles, the sunlight came again, and soon after came that greatest danger of all--that danger from which I saved him by staying my brother's hand in its ruthless rubbing off of the specks on his breakfast orange! Now Citrinus and Mary and I are all waiting impatiently for the day when he shall get his beautiful wings and his two pairs of eyes.

THE DRAGON OF LAGUNITA

When Mary and I came to examine our ant-lion dragon the day after our adventures among the Morrowbie Jukes pits, we found him dead in the bottle of sand. Perhaps his haughty spirit of dragon could not stand such ignominious bottling up, or perhaps there wasn't enough air. Anyway, His Fierceness was dead. His cruel curved jaws would seize and pierce no more foraging ants. His thirsty throat would never again be laved by the fresh blood of victims. _Vale_ dragon!