the one hand and the slaughterer on the other. Which of the two will become
the other's prey?

If we consider only the relative strength of the adversaries, the power of
their weapons, the virulence of their poisons and their different modes of
action, the scale would very often be weighted in favour of the Spider.
Since the Pompilus always emerges victorious from this contest, which
appears to be full of peril for her, she must have a special method, of
which I would fain learn the secret.

In our part of the country, the most powerful and courageous Spider-
huntress is the Ringed Pompilus (Calicurgus annulatus, FAB.), clad in black
and yellow. She stands high on her legs; and her wings have black tips, the
rest being yellow, as though exposed to smoke, like a bloater. Her size is
about that of the Hornet (Vespa crabro). She is rare. I see three or four
of her in the course of the year; and I never fail to halt in the presence
of the proud insect, rapidly striding through the dust of the fields when
the dog-days arrive. Its audacious air, its uncouth gait, its war-like
bearing long made me suspect that to obtain its prey it had to make some
impossible, terrible, unspeakable capture. And my guess was correct. By
dint of waiting and watching I beheld that victim; I saw it in the
huntress' mandibles. It is the Black-bellied Tarantula, the terrible Spider
who slays a Carpenter-bee or a Bumble-bee outright with one stroke of her
weapon; the Spider who kills a Sparrow or a Mole; the formidable creature
whose bite would perhaps not be without danger to ourselves. Yes, this is
the bill of fare which the proud Pompilus provides for her larva.

This spectacle, one of the most striking with which the Hunting Wasps have
ever provided me, has as yet been offered to my eyes but once; and that was
close beside my rural home, in the famous laboratory of the harmas. (The