So here it is safely stored away in her den; and she now descends, tail first, and piercing the pulpy abdomen of the spider, she deposits her egg or eggs. That being done, she carefully begins filling in the hole with earth. She rakes it up with her legs and mandibles, and fills in the hole, every now and then turning round and going backward into the hole to stamp down the earth with her feet, and to ram 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 green!