"Lying out in one of the sandy plateaux covered with olive groves with which Corfu abounds, enjoying his cigar and lounging about in the sandy soil, he came to a spider's nest. Examining it, he found the lid or door would not open, and seemed held firmly within by the proprietor—as if Jack were at home—so he applied forthwith the leverage of a knife-blade, upon which the inmate retired to his inner chamber. The aggressor decided not to disturb him any more that day, but marking the place—most necessary thing to do—thought he would explore further the next day, if fine.
"Accordingly, the next day my friend called early, intending to take off the door and to watch the progress of restoration, and how it would be accomplished. After waiting a long time, out came Monsieur Mygale, and looking carefully round, and finding all quiet, commenced operations by running his web backward and forward across the orifice of his nest, till there was a layer of silken web; upon this he ejected a gluten, over which he scratched the fine sand in the immediate neighborhood of his nest; this done, he again set to work—webbing, then gluten, sand; then again web, gluten, sand, about six times; this occupied in all about eight hours. But the puzzling part was that this time he was cementing and building himself out from his own mansion, when, to the astonishment and delight of his anxious looker-on, he began the finishing stroke by cutting and forming the door by fixing his hind legs in the centre of the new covering, and from these as a centre he began cutting with his jaws right through the door he had made, striking a clear circle round, and leaving about one-eighth of the circumference as a hinge. This done, he lifted the door up and walked in. My friend then tried to open the door with a knife, but the insect pulled it tight from the inside. He therefore dug round him and took him off bodily—mygale and nest complete. The hinge is most carefully and beautifully formed; and there appears to be an important object in view when the spider covers over the whole of the orifice, for immediately the door is raised it springs back as soon as released; and this is caused by the elasticity of the web on the hinge and the peculiar formation of the lid or door, which is made thicker on the lower side, so that its [{135}] own weight helps it to be self-closing, and the rabbeting of the door is wonderfully surfaced. Bolts and Chub locks with a latch-key the mygale family do not possess, but as a substitute the lower part of the door has clawholding holes, so that a bird's beak or other lever being used, Mons. Mygale holds on to the door by these, and with his legs against the sides of his house, offers immense resistance against all comers."
Instinct of Insects.—One of the regular course of free scientific lectures delivered at the Paris Sorbonne this last winter, under the auspices of the Minister of Public Instruction, was by the distinguished naturalist M. Milne-Edwards, on the instinct and intelligence of animals. Taking for his text the saying of Linnaeus, Natura maxime miranda in minimis, he spoke principally of the instinct of insects, and especially of solitary bees. These hymenoptera, in fact, afford one of the most striking examples known of that faculty which impels an animal, either for its own preservation or for the preservation and development of its offspring, to perform the most complicated and intelligent actions, readily and skilfully, yet without having learned how to do them. One species, the carpenter-bee (xylocopa), bores in the trunks of trees galleries running first horizontally and then vertically to a considerable depth. She then collects a quantity of wax and honey. The honey she kneads into a little ball of alimentary matter, in the midst of which she deposits her first egg. With the wax she constructs a horizontal partition, formed of concentric annular layers; this encloses the cell. On this partition she deposits a second egg, enclosed like the first in the provision destined for the support of the future larva; and over it builds another partition of wax; and so on, to the top of the vertical cavity. Then she dies; she never sees her offspring. The latter, so long as they remain larvae, feed upon the honey which the maternal foresight provided for them; and so soon as they have passed through their second metamorphosis and become winged insects, issue forth from their retreat, to perform in their turn a similar labor.
Another species of solitary bee, whose larva is carnivorous, resorts to a still more wonderful, but, it must be confessed, very cruel, expedient to supply the worm-like progeny with food. She constructs a gallery or tunnel in the earth, and crowns it with a chimney curved somewhat like a crosier, so as to keep out the rain. Then she goes a-hunting, and brings back to her den a number of caterpillars. If she kills them at once, they will spoil before her eggs are hatched; if she lets them alone, they will run away. What shall she do? She pierces the caterpillars with her venomous little dart, and injects into them a drop of poison, which Mr. Claude Bernard no doubt will analyze some day. It does not kill, it only paralyzes them; and there they lie, torpid and immovable, till the larvae come into the world and feast off the sweet and succulent flesh at their leisure.
Everybody is familiar with the habits and wonderful industry of hive-bees, wasps, and ants. These insects seem to be governed by something more than blind instinct: it is hardly too much to say that they give indubitable signs of intelligence. They know how to modify their course according to circumstances, to provide against unexpected wants, to avert dangers, and to notify to each other whatever is of consequence to be known by their whole community. Huber, the celebrated bee-keeper of Geneva, relates the following anecdote: One of his hives having been devastated one night by a large sphinx-moth, the bees set to work the next morning and plastered up the door, leaving only a small opening which would just admit them, one at a time, but which the sphinx, with its big body and long wings, could not pass. As soon as the season arrived when the moths terminate their short lives, the bees, no longer fearing an invasion, pulled down their rampart. The next season, as no sphinx appeared to trouble them, they left their door wide open.
Ostrich-keeping.—By late news from the Cape of Good Hope we learn that the farmers of that colony are beginning to find it profitable to keep flocks of ostriches, for the feathers of those birds are worth £25 sterling the pound. For thirty-five ostriches, there must be three hundred acres of grazing-ground. The plucking takes place once in six months; the yield of feathers from each bird being worth from £10 to £12, 10s. The original cost of the young ostriches is said to be £5 each. Some of the [{136}] farmers who have tried the experiment are of opinion that ostrich-feathers will pay better than any other produce of the colony.
Extraordinary Inland Navigation.—We hear from South America that a steamer built in England for the Peruvian government, for the exploration of rivers, has penetrated the great continent from the Atlantic side to a distance of ninety-five leagues only from the Pacific, or nearly all across. The vessel, which draws seven feet water, steamed seven hundred leagues up the Amazon, two hundred up the Ucayati, and thence into the Pachitea, which had never before been navigated except by native canoes. What a magnificent extent of inland navigation is here opened to commercial enterprise! The mind becomes somewhat bewildered in imagining the future of those vast river-valleys when hundreds of steamers shall navigate the streams, trading among millions of population dwelling on their banks.
Is the Sun getting Bigger?—It is known that various speculations have been put forward as to the cause or source of the sun's heat. Among those who consider that it consists in the falling of asteroids or meteorites into the sun, is Mr. J. R. Mayer, of Heilbronn, who states that the surface of the sun measures 115,000 million square miles, and that the asteroids falling thereon form a mass every minute equal in weight to from 94,000 to 188,000 billion kilogrammes. It might be supposed that this enormous shower would increase the mass and weight of the sun, and by consequence produce an appreciable effect on the motion of the planets which compose our system. For instance, it would shorten our year by a second or something less. But the calculations of astronomers show that this effect does not take place; and Mr. Mayer states that to increase the apparent diameter of the sun a single second by the shower of asteroids would require from 33,000 to 66,000 years.
Teaching the Deaf and Dumb to Speak.—Dr. Houdin, director of an institution for the deaf and dumb at Passy, lately announced to the French Academy, that after twenty-five years' experience he had proved the possibility of communicating the faculty of speech, in a certain degree, to deaf mutes. A commission appointed by the Academy and the Faculty to investigate the subject, reports that the learned doctor has really succeeded in several instances in teaching these unfortunate beings to speak and even comprehend spoken language so well that it is difficult to believe that they are not guided by the ear. The patients conversed with the members of the commission, and answered the different questions put to them. They were found to be perfectly familiar with the use and mechanism of speech, though destitute of the sense of hearing, and they comprehended what was said to them, reading the words upon the lips of the speaker with a marvellous facility. Thus they become fit to enter into society and capable of receiving all manner of instruction.
But here is another case still more wonderful. What would you do if you had to instruct and prepare for first communion a child who was at the same time deaf, dumb, and blind? The case is not an imaginary one; it has occurred in an asylum for deaf-mutes at Notre Dame de Larnay, in the diocese of Poitiers. A nun was there charged with the instruction of a child in this unfortunate state, to whom she could appeal only by the sense of touch. Yet the child, who astonishes everybody by her sensibility and intelligence, has come by that means to a knowledge of the spiritual life, of God and his divine Son, of religion and its mysteries and precepts—has been prepared, in fine, for a worthy reception of the Eucharist.