in their nets.
While the first possess a sting, the second have two poisoned fangs.
Often their strength is equally matched; indeed the advantage is
not seldom on the Spider's side. The Wasp has her ruses of war, her
cunningly premeditated strokes: the Spider has her wiles and her set
traps; the first has the advantage of great rapidity of movement, while
the second is able to rely upon her perfidious web; the one has a sting
which contrives to penetrate the exact point to cause paralysis, the
other has fangs which bite the back of the neck and deal sudden death.
We find the paralyser on the one hand and the slaughterer on the other.
Which of the two will become the other's prey?

If we consider only the relative strength of the adversaries, the power
of their weapons, the virulence of their poisons and their different
modes of action, the scale would very often be weighted in favour of the
Spider. Since the Pompilus always emerges victorious from this contest,
which appears to be full of peril for her, she must have a special
method, of which I would fain learn the secret.

In our part of the country, the most powerful and courageous
Spider-huntress is the Ringed Pompilus (Calicurgus annulatus, FAB.),
clad in black and yellow. She stands high on her legs; and her wings
have black tips, the rest being yellow, as though exposed to smoke, like
a bloater. Her size is about that of the Hornet (Vespa crabro). She is
rare. I see three or four of her in the course of the year; and I never
fail to halt in the presence of the proud insect, rapidly striding
through the dust of the fields when the dog-days arrive. Its audacious
air, its uncouth gait, its war-like bearing long made me suspect that
to obtain its prey it had to make some impossible, terrible, unspeakable
capture. And my guess was correct. By dint of waiting and watching
I beheld that victim; I saw it in the huntress' mandibles. It is the
Black-bellied Tarantula, the terrible Spider who slays a Carpenter-bee
or a Bumble-bee outright with one stroke of her weapon; the Spider who
kills a Sparrow or a Mole; the formidable creature whose bite would
perhaps not be without danger to ourselves. Yes, this is the bill of
fare which the proud Pompilus provides for her larva.

This spectacle, one of the most striking with which the Hunting Wasps
have ever provided me, has as yet been offered to my eyes but once; and
that was close beside my rural home, in the famous laborator