This insect is naturally a very helpless being, it can only walk at a slow pace, and strange to add, it can only walk backwards, and not forwards! Yet its food is the juice of insect bodies. How, then, is it to seize upon them circumstanced so unfavourably as it is, having neither swiftness nor ability to direct its motions sufficiently actively to fit it for such a task? It succeeds by an artifice of the most refined character. Nothing daunted by what we might call its natural disadvantages, the insect sets bravely to work to construct a trap for its prey; and the manner in which this is performed may well strike us with wonder, and raise our admiration up to Him who has so marvellously endowed this humble being with wisdom and skill. It first takes care to choose out a proper site for the work it is about, and in this always selects a soil composed of fine, loose, and dry sand, well aware that, as we shall presently see, no other would be fit for its purpose. Generally it chooses such a soil under the shelter of an old wall, where the rain cannot easily penetrate and ruin its work. In so doing it shows its wisdom; for thither, when the heat of the sun is great, or when the rain-drops fall heavily, crowds of insects come for shelter, and fall into its cruel embrace. [Illustration: _Circular Ditch of the Ant-lion._] The site being chosen, the next important step is to mark out the bounds of its habitation, and with this view the insect begins digging a circular ditch, walking backwards until it has completed the circle. This defines the outer limits of its trap, and is a sort of guide line to it in its future operations. Then it sets about the more proper task of excavating its trap. Would that our readers could see this insect at work! Of all the wonderful sights presented to us in the insect world there is none to equal it in interest, none so calculated to enlist our sympathies on the part of the patient, skilful, and unwearied little labourers of this kingdom of nature. Guided by the line it has marked out, the workman steps into the circle, and sets to work with a hearty good will, and with a degree of diligence and excavating skill that would put our railroad "navigators" to the blush. Shower after shower of sand is seen flying up and beyond the boundary described, with the most unintermitting diligence, until the insect has completed the circle again; arrived there, it turns round and excavates back again until it arrives at the same point. But it may perhaps be asked, where are its tools, and by what means does it succeed in casting up these loads of earth? We fear that at best any written description will hardly do justice to our ingenious labourer; its method, however, is as follows:--It uses the head as the spade, or rather shovel, and in the strangest manner it fills the shovel with one of its feet with a load of sand, and then by a quick movement of the head tosses it out of the cavity.