Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

68 NOTES OF A BOTANIST
bored holes in the wall, which looked as if some
one had amused himself by thrusting his finger into
the adobes while still fresh and soft. They
had a
great enemy in the large house-spider, which springs
on its prey from concealment, but spins no web. I
had a tame spider for above a year, which used to
come every evening for its supper of cockroaches.
When I lighted my lamp, it would be waiting
behind and upon the open door for the cockroach,
which dazzled by the glare- - I had no
difficulty in catching with my forceps. Sometimes,
after an hour or two, it would come back for a
second cockroach. Once, as I offered it the cock-
roach, I suddenly substituted my finger,
which it
seized, but immediately released without wounding,
although this spider can bite severely when irritated.
Next to snakes and spiders come the ants, which
are so numerous, and so ubiquitous, that no one
escapes them. Their stings are of all degrees of
virulence, but rarely prove fatal. Many ants bite
fiercely, but not venomously. I could fill many
pages with my experiences of these pugnacious and
patriotic marauders, and of the nearly-related wasps.
I once sent an Indian up a tall laurel, a hundred
feet high, to gather the flowers. At half-way up
was the first branch, and a large paper wasps' nest
in the fork, hidden from view by the ample leaves
of an Arad. As he passed it, the angry insects
swarmed out, but he gained the top of the tree
without a sting, broke off some flowering branches
and threw them down. Unfortunately, there was
no friendly liana by which he could slide down or
pass to a neighbouring tree, and he must needs
descend the way he ascended. He did so, through