When its labours are over, it has been well remarked, the insect now only requires patience--but it must have a good deal of it! It generally buries itself, all but its jaws, in the sand at the bottom, and here awaits its victims. If it requires much patience, surely it also needs to have much power of endurance of hunger, for it may wait for days sometimes without catching any prey. Frequently, when this is the case, it marches out of its trap, and tries its fortune in some more favourable spot. But see! an ant who has been out foraging for the young ants at home is hastening back laden with sweet treasures, when suddenly she finds her path arrested by what appears to her to be a deep but smooth precipice. To plunge down and rise on the opposite side is a shorter cut, in her estimation, than to go round; or perhaps she is led by curiosity to wish to explore this singular cavity, and she plants her feet on its treacherous edge, causing a few grains of sand to roll down and give notice to the wary giant below that a victim is at hand. A step back, and her life would be saved; but no, she leaves the bank, trusts herself to the unfaithful soil of the sides of the precipice, and instantly rolls down in a cloud of dust to the bottom. Terror has now laid hold of her, and with all speed she strives to clamber up the unsteady sides. For a moment escape appears possible, but the Argus-eyed monster below starts up into activity, and piling upon his head a huge load of sand, he shoots it after the escaping ant, and once more brings her down covered with dust into his embrace. The terrible jaws are instantly closed upon the unhappy insect, and in a few minutes her existence is at an end, the savage enemy shaking her violently, or dashing her quivering frame against the earth.
Singular to add, the ant-lion loves not dead prey, and will indignantly cast it out of its trap. Says Réaumur, "They appear so much to delight in the glory of a victory, that they disdain to touch an insect who is not, to say the least, in a condition to contend with them!" It certainly is not that the food when offered to it dead is not fresh enough that it is thus treated; for if only killed an instant before the insect still refuses to touch it. Réaumur is disposed to believe that, like our sportsmen, these interesting but cruel insects destroy prey more for the pleasure of exhibiting their superior skill, than to appease their hunger. But it is rather uncharitable even to the ant-lion, to say so much as this. When the insect has sucked all the juices out of its victim's body, it casts it out of its trap, and the earth around, strewed with dead bodies, is thus the silent witness to the destroying powers of the giant within.