Some other ants once found a cockchafer's wing, which they thought would be a capital thing to dry for winter, and they endeavored to get it into the entrance of their hill. But it was too big. So they drew it out and made the hole larger. Then they tried again, but the wing was still too wide. They turned it and made several efforts to get it in sideways, and upside down, but it was impossible; so they lifted it away, and again enlarged the hole. But the wing would not yet go in. Without losing patience, they once more went to work, and, after having labored for three hours and a half, they at last had the pleasure of seeing their dried wing safely pulled into their store-room.
Then, there are spiders. They frequently show the greatest skill and cunning in the construction of their webs and the capture of their prey, and naturalists say that the spider has a very well developed brain. They must certainly have a geometrical talent, or they could not arrange their webs with such regularity and scientific accuracy. Some spiders will throw their webs across streams that are quite wide.
Now, to do this, they must show themselves to be engineers of no small ability. Sometimes they fasten one end of a thread to a twig on one side of the stream, and, hanging on the other end, swing over until they can land on the other side. But this is not always possible, for they cannot, in some places, get a chance for a fair swing. In such a case, they often wait until the wind is blowing across the stream from the side on which they are, and, weaving a long line, they let it out until the wind carries it over the stream, and it catches in the bushes or grass on the other side. Of course, after one thread is over, the spider can easily run backward and forward on it, and carry over all the rest of his lines.
Bees have so much sense that we ought almost to beg their pardon when we speak of their instinct. Most of us have read what Huber and others have told us of their plans, inventions, laws, and regular habits. It is astonishing to read of a bee-supervisor, going the round of the cells where the larvæ are lying, to see if each of them has enough food. He never stops until he has finished his review, and then he makes another circuit, depositing in each cell just enough food—a little in this one, a great deal in the next, and so on.