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Another nearly allied but much larger species, the Monedula signata, whose habits I observed on the banks of the Upper Amazons, sometimes excavates its mine solitarily on sand- banks recently laid bare in the middle of the river, and closes the orifice before going in search of prey.

They often quarrel among themselves, and then, falling out of the herd, they engage in furious combats, greatly to the advantage of the pursuing wolves. In the summer, the buffalo delights in wallowing in mud. Reaching some marshy spot, he throws himself down, and works away till he excavates a mud-hole in the soil.

The tinge of regret with which we leave Harper's Ferry is mitigated by the hope that greater wonders may lie beyond. In two miles the railroad, as if willing to carve out a picture-frame in which the heroic river may be viewed, excavates the "Potomac Tunnel," as it is named, through which the water is seen like a design in repoussé silver, with two or three emerald islands in it for jewel-work.

In this species the fish pair off, the male, with tail and snout, excavates a broad shallow "nest" in the gravelly bed of the stream, in rapid water, at a depth of one to four feet; the female deposits her eggs in it, and after the exclusion of the milt, they cover them with stones and gravel. They then float down the stream tail foremost. A great majority of them die.

With its protruding jaws it excavates its winding burrows and with its broad feet it pushes the dirt behind it. To keep the jaws from his flesh then was Turan's only concern and this he succeeded in doing until chance gave him a hold upon the creature's throat. After that the end was but a matter of moments. Rising at last he flung the lifeless thing from him with a shudder of disgust.

The tarantula has no door to her burrow, but instead she builds about the entrance a kind of breastwork an inch high and nearly two inches in diameter, and from this fortress sallies out upon her prey. She sinks a deeper shaft than does our spider, but excavates it in the same way with similar tools, her fangs, and lines it with silk from her own body.

Helena and is in a high degree destructive, no wood but teak, and even that not always, resisting it. It eats out almost the entire substance of the wood, leaving only thin partitions between the galleries it excavates in it; but as it never gnaws through the surface to the air, a stick of timber may be almost wholly consumed without showing any external sign of the damage it has sustained.

"Well, then," the Captain went on, "besides this toothed head of his, the animal is provided with a sucker at his mouth, by which he can hold on to any wooden pile or stonework he may wish to perforate so as to make his nest inside; and, gripping this firmly with his sucker and working the head of his shell slowly backwards and forwards with a sort of circular rocking motion, he gradually bores his way into the object of his affections, getting rid of the refuse he excavates by the aid of a natural siphon that runs through his body, and by means of which he blows all his waste borings away curious, isn't it?"

The bird adapts means to an end, and yet so differently from the way of man, an end of which it does not know the value or the purpose. We know it is prompted to it by the instinct of reproduction. When the woodpecker in the fall excavates a lodge in a dry limb, we know he is prompted to it by the instinct of self-preservation, but the birds themselves obey the behests of nature without knowledge.

How can I keep certain insects from getting into my dry beans? I have finished picking the crop. Every year a little, short, stubby beetle gets in them before spring and makes them unfit for use. You have to do with the bean weevil. The eggs are inserted by the insect while the beans are still green in the pods; subsequently the eggs hatch and the worm excavates the interior of the ripened beans.