第6章

the shrewdness of the Pompilus and the folly of the Spider. I will admit that the Wasp may gradually have acquired, as being highly beneficial to her posterity, the instinct by which she first of all so judiciously drags the victim from its refuge, in order there to paralyse it without incurring danger, provided that you will explain why the Segestria, possessing an intellect no less gifted than that of the Pompilus, does not yet know how to counteract the trick of which she has so long been the victim. What would the Black Spider need to do to escape her exterminator? Practically nothing: it would be enough for her to withdraw into her tube, instead of coming up to post herself at the entrance, like a sentry, whenever the enemy is in the neighbourhood. It is very brave of her, I agree, but also very risky. The Pompilus will pounce upon one of the legs spread outside the burrow for defence and attack; and the besieged Spider will perish, betrayed by her own boldness. This posture is excellent when waiting for prey. But the Wasp is not a quarry; she is an enemy and one of the most dreaded of enemies. The Spider knows this. At the sight of the Wasp, instead of placing herself fearlessly but foolishly on her threshold, why does she not retreat into her fortress, where the other would not attack her? The accumulated experience of generations should have taught her this elementary tactical device, which is of the greatest value to the prosperity of her race. If the Pompilus has perfected her method of attack, why has not the Segestria perfected her method of defence? Is it possible that centuries upon centuries should have modified the one to its advantage without succeeding in modifying the other? Here I am utterly at a loss. And I say to myself, in all simplicity: since the Pompili must have Spiders, the former have possessed their patient cunning and the other their foolish audacity from all time. This may be puerile, if you like to think it so, and not in keeping with the transcendental aims of our fashionable theorists; the argument contains neither the subjective nor the objective point of view, neither adaptation nor differentiation, neither atavism nor evolutionism. Very well, but at least I understand it.

Let us return to the habits of Pompilus apicalis. Without expecting results of any particular interest, for in captivity the respective talents of the huntress and the quarry seem to slumber, I place together, in a wide jar, a Wasp and a Segestria. The Spider and her enemy mutually avoid each other, both being equally timid. A judicious shake or two brings them into contact. The Segestria, from time to time, catches hold of the Pompilus, who gathers herself up as best she can, without attempting to use her sting; the Spider rolls the insect between her legs and even between her mandibles, but appears to dislike doing it. Once I see her lie on her back and hold the Pompilus above her, as far away as possible, while turning her over in her fore-legs and munching at her with her mandibles. The Wasp, whether by her own adroitness or owing to the Spider's dread of her, promptly escapes from the terrible fangs, moves to a short distance and does not seem to trouble unduly about the buffeting which she has received.

She quietly polishes her wings and curls her antennae by pulling them while standing on them with her fore-tarsi. The attack of the Segestria, stimulated by my shakes, is repeated ten times over; and the Pompilus always escapes from the venomous fangs unscathed, as though she were invulnerable.

Is she really invulnerable? By no means, as we shall soon have proved to us; if she retires safe and sound, it is because the Spider does not use her fangs. What we see is a sort of truce, a tacit convention forbidding deadly strokes, or rather the demoralization due to captivity; and the two adversaries are no longer in a sufficiently warlike mood to make play with their daggers. The tranquillity of the Pompilus, who keeps on jauntily curling her antennae in face of the Segestria, reassures me as to my prisoner's fate; for greater security, however, I throw her a scrap of paper, in the folds of which she will find a refuge during the night. She instals herself there, out of the Spider's reach. Next morning I find her dead. During the night the Segestria, whose habits are nocturnal, has recovered her daring and stabbed her enemy. I had my suspicions that the parts played might be reversed! The butcher of yesterday is the victim of to-day.

I replace the Pompilus by a Hive-bee. The interview is not protracted. Two hours later, the Bee is dead, bitten by the Spider. A Drone-fly suffers the same fate. The Segestria, however, does not touch either of the two corpses, any more than she touched the corpse of the Pompilus. In these murders the captive seems to have no other object than to rid herself of a turbulent neighbour. When appetite awakes, perhaps the victims will be turned to account. They were not; and the fault was mine. I placed in the jar a Bumble-bee of average size. A day later the Spider was dead; the rude sharer of her captivity had done the deed.