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Lastly, to complete the enumeration of the Bees known to me as making their homes in the Mason's cupolas, I must add Megachile apicalis, who piles in each cell a half-dozen or more honey-pots constructed with disks cut from the leaves of the wild rose, and an Anthidium whose species I cannot state, having seen nothing of her but her white cotton sacks.
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.
One Pompilus, though greatly inferior to the Segestria in size and strength, nevertheless makes war upon the Black Spider and succeeds in overpowering this formidable quarry. This is Pompilus apicalis, VAN DER LIND, who is hardly larger than the Hive-bee, but very much slenderer. She is of a uniform black; her wings are a cloudy brown, with transparent tips.
What a shelter for the larva of this Pompilus: the warm retreat and downy hammock of the Segestria! Here then, already, we have two Spider-huntresses, the Ringed Pompilus and P. apicalis, who, unversed in the miner's craft, establish their offspring inexpensively in accidental chinks in the walls, or even in the lair of the Spider on whom the larva feeds.
These fish belong to the genera Acrodus, Hybodus, Gyrolepis, and Saurichthys. Hybodus plicatilis, Agassiz. Teeth. Saurichthys apicalis, Agassiz. Tooth; natural size and magnified. Gyrolepis tenuistriatus, Agassiz. Scale; natural size and magnified. Remains of saurians, Plesiosaurus among others, have also been found in the bone-bed, and plates of an Encrinus.
This done, the rest is nothing. The Tarantula-huntress must behave in the same manner. Enlightened by her kinswoman, Pompilus apicalis, my mind pictures her wandering stealthily around the Lycosa's rampart. The Lycosa hurries up from the bottom of her burrow, believing that a victim is approaching; she ascends her vertical tube, spreading her fore-legs outside, ready to leap.
The few bits of mortar which I saw carried have but very roughly blocked the silken chamber at the end. Thus Pompilus apicalis lays her quarry and her eggs not in a burrow of her own making, but in the Spider's actual house. Perhaps the silken tube belongs to this very victim, which in that event provides both board and lodging.
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