is at great pains to get it properly balanced on its back, by an alternate motion of the rings composing its body. When it has succeeded in adjusting the stone, it crawls up the side of the pit with great care, and deposits its burthen on the outside of the circle. Should the stone happen to be round, the balance can be kept only with the greatest difficulty, as it has to travel with its load upon a slope of loose sand, which is ready to give way at every step; and often when the insect has carried it to the very brink, it rolls off its back and tumbles down to the bottom of the pit. This accident, so far from discouraging the ant-lion, only stimulates it to more persevering efforts. Bonnet observed it renew these attempts to dislodge a stone five or six times. It is only when it finds it utterly impossible to succeed, that it abandons the design and commences another pit in a fresh situation. When it succeeds in getting a stone beyond the line of its circle, it is not contented with letting it rest there; but, to prevent it from again rolling in, it goes on to push it to a considerable distance. We maybe pardoned for pausing before we give full credence to these details. The ant-lion feeds only on the blood or juice of insects; and as soon as it has extracted these, it tosses the dry carcase out of its den. When it is about to change into a pupa, it proceeds in nearly the same manner as the caterpillar of the water-betony moth (_Cucullia scrophulariæ_). It first builds a case of sand, the particles of which are secured by threads of silk, and then tapestries the whole with a silken web. Within this it undergoes its transformation into a pupa, and in due time it emerges in form of a four-winged fly, closely resembling the dragon-flies (_Libellulæ_), vulgarly and erroneously called _horse-stingers_. The instance of the ant-lion naturally leads us to consider the design of the Author of Nature in so nicely adjusting, in all animals, the means of destruction and of escape. As the larger quadrupeds of prey are provided with a most ingenious machinery for preying on the weaker, so are those furnished with the most admirable powers of evading their destroyers.