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The peculiar insistence of the sting when the mouth was stabbed told me as much in the beginning. At the end of September, almost a month after the operation, the Epeira is in the same condition, neither dead nor alive: the palpi still quiver when touched with a straw, but nothing else moves.
By the time that an animal had reached, after numberless generations, the deepest recesses, disuse will on this view have more or less perfectly obliterated its eyes, and natural selection will often have effected other changes, such as an increase in the length of the antennæ or palpi, as a compensation for blindness.
In September I unearth from a heap of mould five Cetonia-grubs, paralysed by the Two-banded Scolia and bearing on the abdomen the as yet unhatched egg of the Wasp. I remove the eggs and install the helpless creatures on a bed of leaf-mould with a glass cover. I propose to see how long I can keep them fresh, able to move their mandibles and palpi.
It is the mouth that acts as the barrow. A tiny ball of earth is held between the fangs and is supported by the palpi, or feelers, which are little arms employed in the service of the mouth-parts. The Lycosa descends cautiously from her turret, goes to some distance to get rid of her burden and quickly dives down again to bring up more.
One pair of their limbs appear to terminate in a sort of foot like a delicately shaped human foot, except that there appear to be no toes. The other pair of limbs terminate in something that, from the single instance I experienced, seemed to resemble soft but firm antennæ or, perhaps, digitated palpi " "Feelers!" I blurted out. "I don't know, but I think so.
The labrum forms a segment of a circle; it is reddish, edged with a small number of very short, stiff hairs. The mandibles are powerful, red-brown, curved and sharp; when at rest they meet without crossing. The maxillary palpi are rather long, consisting of two cylindrical sections of equal length, the outer ending in a very short bristle.
One would have thought that she would recognize her mistake with those eight eyes of hers, which gleam like precious stones. The silly creature pays no attention. Lovingly she embraces the cork ball, fondles it with her palpi, fastens it to her spinnerets and thenceforth drags it after her as though she were dragging her own bag. Let us give another the choice between the imitation and the real.
At last the apparently deceased comes back to life. The tarsi quiver, those of the fore-legs first; the palpi and the antennæ move slowly to and fro: this is the prelude to the awakening. Now the legs begin to kick. The insect bends slightly at its pinched waist; it buttresses itself on its head and back; it turns over.
This genus differs in the form of the head from Lipura and also wants the terminal upcurved spines, while the antennæ are much more pointed. The mandibles, like those of other Poduras, end in from three to six teeth, and have a broad, many-toothed molar surface below. The maxillæ; end in a tridentate lacinia as usual, though the palpi and galea I have not yet studied.
All the parts of the mouth are extremely minute; the palpi and exterior maxillae have almost disappeared; the cirri are thick, inarticulate, and destitute of bristles; and the muscles both of the mouth and cirri are without transverse striation. Darwin found the stomach perfectly empty in the animal examined by him.
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