t no further attention.

Let us penetrate yet deeper into the wallet-bearer's stupidity. After
depriving the Lycosa of her eggs, I throw her a ball of cork, roughly
polished with a file and of the same size as the stolen pill. She
accepts the corky substance, so different from the silk purse, without
the least demur. One would have thought that she would recognize her
mistake with those eight eyes of hers, which gleam like precious stones.
The silly creature pays no attention. Lovingly she embraces the cork
ball, fondles it with her palpi, fastens it to her spinnerets and
thenceforth drags it after her as though she were dragging her own bag.

Let us give another the choice between the imitation and the real. The
rightful pill and the cork ball are placed together on the floor of the
jar. Will the Spider be able to know the one that belongs to her? The
fool is incapable of doing so. She makes a wild rush and seizes
haphazard at one time her property, at another my sham product. Whatever
is first touched becomes a good capture and is forthwith hung up.

If I increase the number of cork balls, if I put in four or five of them,
with the real pill among them, it is seldom that the Lycosa recovers her
own property. Attempts at enquiry, attempts at selection there are none.
Whatever she snaps up at random she sticks to, be it good or bad. As
there are more of the sham pills of cork, these are the most often seized
by the Spider.

This obtuseness baffles me. Can the animal be deceived by the soft
contact of the cork? I replace the cork balls by pellets of cotton or
paper, kept in their round shape with a few bands of thread. Both are
very readily accepted instead of the real bag that has been removed.

Can the illusion be due to the colouring, which is light in the cork and
not unlike the tint of the silk globe when soiled with a little earth,
while it is white in the paper and the cotton, when it is identical with
that of the original pill? I give the Lycosa, in exchange for her work,
a pellet of silk thread, chosen of a fine red, the brightest of all
colours. The uncommon pill is as readily accepted and as jealously
guarded as the others.

We will leave the wallet-bearer alone; we know all that we want to know
about her poverty of intellect. Let us wait for the hatching, which
takes place in the first fortnight in September. As they come out of the
pill, the youngsters, to the number of about a couple