e sight of the approaching
enemy, the Spider drops to the ground, with her belly upwards and her
legs gathered together. The other dashes forward, clasps her round the
body, explores her and prepares to sting her in the mouth. But she does
not bare her weapon. I see her bending attentively over the poisoned
fangs, as though to investigate their terrible mechanism; she then goes
away. The Spider is still motionless, so much so that I really believe
her dead, paralysed unknown to me, at a moment when I was not looking.
I take her from the cage to examine her comfortably. No sooner is she
placed on the table than behold, she comes to life again and promptly
scampers off! The cunning creature was shamming death beneath the Wasp's
stiletto, so artfully that I was taken in. She deceived an enemy more
cunning than myself, the Pompilus, who inspected her very closely
and took her for a corpse unworthy of her dagger. Perhaps the simple
creature, like the Bear in the fable of old, already noticed the smell
of high meat.

This ruse, if ruse it be, appears to me more often than not to turn to
the disadvantage of the Spider, whether Tarantula, Epeira or another.
The Calicurgus who has just put the Spider on her back after a brisk
fight knows quite well that her prostrate foe is not dead. The latter,
thinking to protect itself, simulates the inertia of a corpse; the
assailant profits by this to deliver her most perilous blow, the stab in
the mouth. Were the fangs, each tipped with its drop of poison, to open
then; were they to snap, to give a desperate bite, the Pompilus would
not dare to expose the tip of her abdomen to their deadly scratch. The
shamming of death is exactly what enables the huntress to succeed in her
dangerous operation. They say, O guileless Epeirae, that the struggle
for life has taught you to adopt this inert attitude for purposes of
defence. Well, the struggle for life was a very bad counsellor. Trust
rather to common sense and learn, by degrees, at your own cost, that to
hit back, above all if you can do so promptly, is still the best way to
intimidate the enemy. (Fabre does not believe in the actual shamming
of death by animals. Cf. "The Glow-worm and Other Beetles," by J.
Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapters 8 to
15.--Translator's Note.)

The remainder of my observations on these insects under glass is little
more than a long series of failures. Of two operators on Weevils, one,