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This presumes, it is true, an exemplary patience on the Lycosa's part; for the burrow has naught that can serve to entice victims. At best, the ledge provided by the turret may, at rare intervals, tempt some weary wayfarer to use it as a resting-place.
The Lycosa's sons know their trade as acrobats to perfection: the mother need not trouble her head about their fall. With a sweep of the pencil, I make the family of one Spider fall around another laden with her own family. The dislodged ones nimbly scramble up the legs and climb on the back of their new mother, who kindly allows them to behave as though they belonged to her.
Because the liquid which I employ, ammonia, cannot be compared, for deadly efficacy, with the Lycosa's poison, a pretty formidable poison, as we shall see. I make a Tarantula bite the leg of a young, well-fledged Sparrow, ready to leave the nest. A drop of blood flows; the wounded spot is surrounded by a reddish circle, changing to purple.
The nature of the kerb is decided by the nature of the materials within the Lycosa's reach, in the close neighbourhood of the building-yard. There is no selection: everything meets with approval, provided that it be near at hand. Economy of time, therefore, causes the defensive wall to vary greatly as regards its constituent elements. The height varies also.
These abrupt tactics make the thing a certainty. Though he were winged and swift of flight, the unwary one who approaches the ambush is lost. This presumes, it is true, an exemplary patience on the Lycosa's part; for the burrow has naught that can serve to entice victims. At best, the ledge provided by the turret may, at rare intervals, tempt some weary wayfarer to use it as a resting-place.
What is required is the miner's short-handled pick, wherewith to drive hard, to insert, to lever and to extract; what is required is the sharp point that enters the earth and crumbles it into fragments. There remain the Lycosa's fangs, delicate weapons which we at first hesitate to associate with such work, so illogical does it seem to dig a pit with surgeon's scalpels.
The Lycosa's affection for her offspring hardly surpasses that of the plant, which is unacquainted with any tender feeling and nevertheless bestows the nicest and most delicate care upon its seeds. The animal, in many cases, knows no other sense of motherhood. What cares the Lycosa for her brood!
Moreover, while hampered by a narrow shaft, the operator would not wield her lancet with the precision called for by her designs. The bold irruption shows us once again, more plainly than the tussles on my table, the Lycosa's reluctance to sink her fangs into her enemy's body. When the two are face to face at the bottom of the lair, then or never is the moment to have it out with the foe.
A short length of reed is planted perpendicularly in a large earthenware pan filled with sand. This will be the Lycosa's burrow. In the middle I stick some heads of globe-thistle garnished with honey as a refectory for the Pompilus; a couple of Locusts, renewed as and when consumed, will sustain the Tarantula.
Then came the Phylloxera, the vine-stocks perished and the once green table-land is now no more than a desolate stretch where a few tufts of hardy grasses sprout among the pebbles. This waste-land is the Lycosa's paradise: in an hour's time, if need were, I should discover a hundred burrows within a limited range.
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