m it down with her body as a
rammer. When the hole is filled, it is curious to observe with what care
she levels the surface, and removes the surrounding lumps of earth, laying
some first over the tomb of the spider, and others about, so as to make
that place look as much as possible like the surface all round. And before
she has done with it--and she works often for ten minutes at this leveling
and disguising before she is perfectly satisfied--she makes the place so
exactly like all the rest of the surface, that it will require good eyes
and close observation to recognize it.

She has now done her part, and Nature must do the rest. She has deposited
her eggs in the body of the spider, and laid that body in the earth in the
most sunny spot she can find. She has laid it so near the surface that the
sun will act on it powerfully, yet deep enough to conceal it from view.
She has, with great art and anxiety, destroyed all traces of the hole, and
the effect will soon commence. The heat of the sun will hatch the egg. The
larva, or young grub of the sand-wasp, will become alive, and begin to
feed on the pulpy body of the spider in which it is enveloped. This food
will suffice it till it is ready to emerge to daylight, and pass through
the different stages of its existence. Like the ostrich, the sand-wasp
thus leaves her egg in the sand till the sun hatches it, and having once
buried it, most probably never knows herself where it is deposited. It is
left to Nature and Providence

WHAT HORSES THINK OF MEN. FROM THE RAVEN IN THE HAPPY FAMILY. (FROM
DICKENS'S HOUSEHOLD WORDS.)

I suppose you thought I was dead? No such thing. Don't flatter yourselves
that I haven't got my eye upon you. I am wide awake, and you give me
plenty to look at.

I have begun my great work about you, I have been collecting materials
from the Horse, to begin with. You are glad to hear it, ain't you? Very
likely. Oh, he gives you a nice character! He makes you out a charming set
of fellows.

He informs me by-the-by, that he is a distant relation of the pony that
was taken up in a balloon a few weeks ago; and that the pony's account of
your going to see him at Vauxhall Gardens, is an amazing thing. The pony
says that when he looked round on the assembled crowd, come to see the
realization of the wood-cut in the bill, he found it impossible to
discover which was the real Mister Green--there were so many Mister
Greens--and they were all so very g