Insect transformations / [Anon].

  • James Rennie
Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Insect transformations / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    122/442 (page 106)
    was about to carry off the prize in triumph. The spider, however, instantly regained it with her man- dibles, and redoubled her endeavours to snatch the bag from her enemy; but her efforts were vain, for the ant-lion, being the stronger, succeeded in dragging it under the sand. The unfortunate mother, now robbed of her eggs, might have at least saved her own life, as she could easily have escaped out of the pit-fall; but, wonderful to tell, she chose rather to be buried alive along with her eggs. As the sand concealed from my view what was passing below, I laid hold of the spider, leaving the bag in the power of the ant-lion. But the aftectionate mother, de- prived of her bag, would not quit the spot where she had lost them, though I repeatedly pushed her with a twig. Life itself seemed to have become a burden to her since all her hopes and pleasures were gone for ever*.” That some portion of heat may be communicated to the eggs of the spider, which are thus carried so assiduously under her body, is highly probable ; and it is also, no doubt, advantageous to the young, when hatched, to have the assistance of their mother to open the bag for them, as was remarked by De Geerf; “ without which,” say Kirby and Spence, “ they could never escape J.” But that neither of these ere indispensable conditions we have ascertained by re- peated experiments. We have taken a considerable number of these egg-bags from their mothers, and put them under inverted wine-glasses and into pill- boxes, and in every instance the young have been duly hatched, and made their way without assistance out of the bag. In all these experiments, the young spiders joined in concert in making a web across their prison; a circumstance at variance with the assertion, * Bonnet, Oeuvres, vol. ii. p. 435. f De Geer, Mem. vol. vii. p. 194. Inlrod. i. p. 361.