whence I ousted her and suits the
operation perfectly. We therefore expect to see the Spider settled
before long in a shaft of her own construction.

We are disappointed. Weeks pass and not an effort is made, not one.
Demoralized by the absence of an ambush, the Lycosa hardly vouchsafes a
glance at the game which I serve up. The Crickets pass within her reach
in vain; most often she scorns them. She slowly wastes away with fasting
and boredom. At length, she dies.

Take up your miner's trade again, poor fool! Make yourself a home, since
you know how to, and life will be sweet to you for many a long day yet:
the weather is fine and victuals plentiful. Dig, delve, go underground,
where safety lies. Like an idiot, you refrain; and you perish. Why?

Because the craft which you were wont to ply is forgotten; because the
days of patient digging are past and your poor brain is unable to work
back. To do a second time what has been done already is beyond your wit.
For all your meditative air, you cannot solve the problem of how to
reconstruct that which is vanished and gone.

Let us now see what we can do with younger Lycosae, who are at the
burrowing-stage. I dig out five or six at the end of February. They are
half the size of the old ones; their burrows are equal in diameter to my
little finger. Rubbish quite fresh-spread around the pit bears witness
to the recent date of the excavations.

Relegated to their wire cages, these young Lycosae behave differently
according as the soil placed at their disposal is or is not already
provided with a burrow made by me. A burrow is hardly the word: I give
them but the nucleus of a shaft, about an inch deep, to lure them on.
When in possession of this rudimentary lair, the Spider does not hesitate
to pursue the work which I have interrupted in the fields. At night, she
digs with a will. I can see this by the heap of rubbish flung aside. She
at last obtains a house to suit her, a house surmounted by the usual
turret.

The others, on the contrary, those Spiders for whom the thrust of my
pencil has not contrived an entrance-hall representing, to a certain
extent, the natural gallery whence I dislodged them, absolutely refuse to
work; and they die, notwithstanding the abundance of provisions.

The first pursue the season's task. They were digging when I caught
them; and, carried away by the enthusiasm of their activity, they go on
digging inside my cages. Taken in