Project Gutenberg Etext The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre


Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!

Please take a look at the important information in this header.
We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
electronic path open for the next readers.  Do not remove this.


**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**

**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**

*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*

Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
further information is included below.  We need your donations.


The Life of the Spider

by J. Henri Fabre - translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

September, 1999  [Etext #1887]


Project Gutenberg Etext The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre
******This file should be named lfspd10.txt or lfspd10.zip******

Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, lfspd11.txt
VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, lfspd10a.txt


This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
from the 1912 Hodder and Stoughton edition.

Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
copyright notice is included.  Therefore, we do NOT keep these books
in compliance with any particular paper edition, usually otherwise.


We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance
of the official release dates, for time for better editing.

Please note:  neither this list nor its contents are final till
midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
and editing by those who wish to do so.  To be sure you have an
up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes
in the first week of the next month.  Since our ftp program has
a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a
look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a
new copy has at least one byte more or less.


Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)

We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take
to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.  This
projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If our value
per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-six text
files per month, or 432 more Etexts in 1999 for a total of 2000+
If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the
total should reach over 200 billion Etexts given away this year.

The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
Files by the December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000=Trillion]
This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
which is only ~5% of the present number of computer users.

At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we
manage to get some real funding; currently our funding is mostly
from Michael Hart's salary at Carnegie-Mellon University, and an
assortment of sporadic gifts; this salary is only good for a few
more years, so we are looking for something to replace it, as we
don't want Project Gutenberg to be so dependent on one person.

We need your donations more than ever!


All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are
tax deductible to the extent allowable by law.  (CMU = Carnegie-
Mellon University).

For these and other matters, please mail to:

Project Gutenberg
P. O. Box  2782
Champaign, IL 61825

When all other email fails try our Executive Director:
Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>

We would prefer to send you this information by email.

******

To access Project Gutenberg etexts, use any Web browser
to view http://promo.net/pg.  This site lists Etexts by
author and by title, and includes information about how
to get involved with Project Gutenberg.  You could also
download our past Newsletters, or subscribe here.  This
is one of our major sites, please email hart@pobox.com,
for a more complete list of our various sites.

To go directly to the etext collections, use FTP or any
Web browser to visit a Project Gutenberg mirror (mirror
sites are available on 7 continents; mirrors are listed
at http://promo.net/pg).

Mac users, do NOT point and click, typing works better.

Example FTP session:

ftp sunsite.unc.edu
login: anonymous
password: your@login
cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
cd etext90 through etext99
dir [to see files]
get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
GET GUTINDEX.??  [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]
GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]

***

**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**

(Three Pages)


***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
Why is this "Small Print!" statement here?  You know: lawyers.
They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
fault.  So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
disclaims most of our liability to you.  It also tells you how
you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.

*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
this "Small Print!" statement.  If you do not, you can receive
a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
you got it from.  If you received this etext on a physical
medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.

ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-
tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor
Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at
Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project").  Among other
things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and
without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules, set forth
below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.

To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
works.  Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
medium they may be on may contain "Defects".  Among other
things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this
etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
time to the person you received it from.  If you received it
on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
copy.  If you received it electronically, such person may
choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
receive it electronically.

THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS".  NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
may have other legal rights.

INDEMNITY
You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.

DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
or:

[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
     including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-
     cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as
     *EITHER*:

     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
          does *not* contain characters other than those
          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
          author, and additional characters may be used to
          indicate hypertext links; OR

     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
          OR

     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
          or other equivalent proprietary form).

[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
     "Small Print!" statement.

[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
     net profits you derive calculated using the method you
     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
     payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon
     University" within the 60 days following each
     date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)
     your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.

WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,
scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty
free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution
you can think of.  Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg
Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".

*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*





This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
from the 1912 Hodder and Stoughton edition.





THE LIFE OF THE SPIDER




CHAPTER I:  THE BLACK-BELLIED TARANTULA



The Spider has a bad name:  to most of us, she represents an
odious, noxious animal, which every one hastens to crush under
foot.  Against this summary verdict the observer sets the beast's
industry, its talent as a weaver, its wiliness in the chase, its
tragic nuptials and other characteristics of great interest.  Yes,
the Spider is well worth studying, apart from any scientific
reasons; but she is said to be poisonous and that is her crime and
the primary cause of the repugnance wherewith she inspires us.
Poisonous, I agree, if by that we understand that the animal is
armed with two fangs which cause the immediate death of the little
victims which it catches; but there is a wide difference between
killing a Midge and harming a man.  However immediate in its
effects upon the insect entangled in the fatal web, the Spider's
poison is not serious for us and causes less inconvenience than a
Gnat-bite.  That, at least, is what we can safely say as regards
the great majority of the Spiders of our regions.

Nevertheless, a few are to be feared; and foremost among these is
the Malmignatte, the terror of the Corsican peasantry.  I have seen
her settle in the furrows, lay out her web and rush boldly at
insects larger than herself; I have admired her garb of black
velvet speckled with carmine-red; above all, I have heard most
disquieting stories told about her.  Around Ajaccio and Bonifacio,
her bite is reputed very dangerous, sometimes mortal.  The
countryman declares this for a fact and the doctor does not always
dare deny it.  In the neighbourhood of Pujaud, not far from
Avignon, the harvesters speak with dread of Theridion lugubre, {1}
first observed by Leon Dufour in the Catalonian mountains;
according to them, her bite would lead to serious accidents.  The
Italians have bestowed a bad reputation on the Tarantula, who
produces convulsions and frenzied dances in the person stung by
her.  To cope with 'tarantism,' the name given to the disease that
follows on the bite of the Italian Spider, you must have recourse
to music, the only efficacious remedy, so they tell us.  Special
tunes have been noted, those quickest to afford relief.  There is
medical choreography, medical music.  And have we not the
tarentella, a lively and nimble dance, bequeathed to us perhaps by
the healing art of the Calabrian peasant?

Must we take these queer things seriously or laugh at them?  From
the little that I have seen, I hesitate to pronounce an opinion.
Nothing tells us that the bite of the Tarantula may not provoke, in
weak and very impressionable people, a nervous disorder which music
will relieve; nothing tells us that a profuse perspiration,
resulting from a very energetic dance, is not likely to diminish
the discomfort by diminishing the cause of the ailment.  So far
from laughing, I reflect and enquire, when the Calabrian peasant
talks to me of his Tarantula, the Pujaud reaper of his Theridion
lugubre, the Corsican husbandman of his Malmignatte.  Those Spiders
might easily deserve, at least partly, their terrible reputation.

The most powerful Spider in my district, the Black-bellied
Tarantula, will presently give us something to think about, in this
connection.  It is not my business to discuss a medical point, I
interest myself especially in matters of instinct; but, as the
poison-fangs play a leading part in the huntress' manoeuvres of
war, I shall speak of their effects by the way.  The habits of the
Tarantula, her ambushes, her artifices, her methods of killing her
prey:  these constitute my subject.  I will preface it with an
account by Leon Dufour, {2} one of those accounts in which I used
to delight and which did much to bring me into closer touch with
the insect.  The Wizard of the Landes tells us of the ordinary
Tarantula, that of the Calabrias, observed by him in Spain:


'Lycosa tarantula by preference inhabits open places, dry, arid,
uncultivated places, exposed to the sun.  She lives generally--at
least when full-grown--in underground passages, regular burrows,
which she digs for herself.  These burrows are cylindrical; they
are often an inch in diameter and run into the ground to a depth of
more than a foot; but they are not perpendicular.  The inhabitant
of this gut proves that she is at the same time a skilful hunter
and an able engineer.  It was a question for her not only of
constructing a deep retreat that could hide her from the pursuit of
her foes:  she also had to set up her observatory whence to watch
for her prey and dart out upon it.  The Tarantula provides for
every contingency:  the underground passage, in fact, begins by
being vertical, but, at four or five inches from the surface, it
bends at an obtuse angle, forms a horizontal turning and then
becomes perpendicular once more.  It is at the elbow of this tunnel
that the Tarantula posts herself as a vigilant sentry and does not
for a moment lose sight of the door of her dwelling; it was there
that, at the period when I was hunting her, I used to see those
eyes gleaming like diamonds, bright as a cat's eyes in the dark.

'The outer orifice of the Tarantula's burrow is usually surmounted
by a shaft constructed throughout by herself.  It is a genuine work
of architecture, standing as much as an inch above the ground and
sometimes two inches in diameter, so that it is wider than the
burrow itself.  This last circumstance, which seems to have been
calculated by the industrious Spider, lends itself admirably to the
necessary extension of the legs at the moment when the prey is to
be seized.  The shaft is composed mainly of bits of dry wood joined
by a little clay and so artistically laid, one above the other,
that they form the scaffolding of a straight column, the inside of
which is a hollow cylinder.  The solidity of this tubular building,
of this outwork, is ensured above all by the fact that it is lined,
upholstered within, with a texture woven by the Lycosa's {3}
spinnerets and continued throughout the interior of the burrow.  It
is easy to imagine how useful this cleverly-manufactured lining
must be for preventing landslip or warping, for maintaining
cleanliness and for helping her claws to scale the fortress.

'I hinted that this outwork of the burrow was not there invariably;
as a matter of fact, I have often come across Tarantulas' holes
without a trace of it, perhaps because it had been accidentally
destroyed by the weather, or because the Lycosa may not always
light upon the proper building-materials, or, lastly, because
architectural talent is possibly declared only in individuals that
have reached the final stage, the period of perfection of their
physical and intellectual development.

'One thing is certain, that I have had numerous opportunities of
seeing these shafts, these out-works of the Tarantula's abode; they
remind me, on a larger scale, of the tubes of certain Caddis-worms.
The Arachnid had more than one object in view in constructing them:
she shelters her retreat from the floods; she protects it from the
fall of foreign bodies which, swept by the wind, might end by
obstructing it; lastly, she uses it as a snare by offering the
Flies and other insects whereon she feeds a projecting point to
settle on.  Who shall tell us all the wiles employed by this clever
and daring huntress?

'Let us now say something about my rather diverting Tarantula-
hunts.  The best season for them is the months of May and June.
The first time that I lighted on this Spider's burrows and
discovered that they were inhabited by seeing her come to a point
on the first floor of her dwelling--the elbow which I have
mentioned--I thought that I must attack her by main force and
pursue her relentlessly in order to capture her; I spent whole
hours in opening up the trench with a knife a foot long by two
inches wide, without meeting the Tarantula.  I renewed the
operation in other burrows, always with the same want of success; I
really wanted a pickaxe to achieve my object, but I was too far
from any kind of house.  I was obliged to change my plan of attack
and I resorted to craft.  Necessity, they say, is the mother of
invention.

'It occurred to me to take a stalk, topped with its spikelet, by
way of a bait, and to rub and move it gently at the orifice of the
burrow.  I soon saw that the Lycosa's attention and desires were
roused.  Attracted by the bait, she came with measured steps
towards the spikelet.  I withdrew it in good time a little outside
the hole, so as not to leave the animal time for reflexion; and the
Spider suddenly, with a rush, darted out of her dwelling, of which
I hastened to close the entrance.  The Tarantula, bewildered by her
unaccustomed liberty, was very awkward in evading my attempts at
capture; and I compelled her to enter a paper bag, which I closed
without delay.

'Sometimes, suspecting the trap, or perhaps less pressed by hunger,
she would remain coy and motionless, at a slight distance from the
threshold, which she did not think it opportune to cross.  Her
patience outlasted mine.  In that case, I employed the following
tactics:  after making sure of the Lycosa's position and the
direction of the tunnel, I drove a knife into it on the slant, so
as to take the animal in the rear and cut off its retreat by
stopping up the burrow.  I seldom failed in my attempt, especially
in soil that was not stony.  In these critical circumstances,
either the Tarantula took fright and deserted her lair for the
open, or else she stubbornly remained with her back to the blade.
I would then give a sudden jerk to the knife, which flung both the
earth and the Lycosa to a distance, enabling me to capture her.  By
employing this hunting-method, I sometimes caught as many as
fifteen Tarantulae within the space of an hour.

'In a few cases, in which the Tarantula was under no
misapprehension as to the trap which I was setting for her, I was
not a little surprised, when I pushed the stalk far enough down to
twist it round her hiding-place, to see her play with the spikelet
more or less contemptuously and push it away with her legs, without
troubling to retreat to the back of her lair.

'The Apulian peasants, according to Baglivi's {4} account, also
hunt the Tarantula by imitating the humming of an insect with an
oat-stalk at the entrance to her burrow.  I quote the passage:

'"Ruricolae nostri quando eas captare volunt, ad illorum latibula
accedunt, tenuisque avenacae fistulae sonum, apum murmuri non
absimilem, modulantur.  Quo audito, ferox exit Tarentula ut muscas
vel alia hujus modi insecta, quorum murmur esse putat, captat;
captatur tamen ista a rustico insidiatore." {5}

"The Tarantula, so dreadful at first sight, especially when we are
filled with the idea that her bite is dangerous, so fierce in
appearance, is nevertheless quite easy to tame, as I have often
found by experiment.

'On the 7th of May 1812, while at Valencia, in Spain, I caught a
fair-sized male Tarantula, without hurting him, and imprisoned him
in a glass jar, with a paper cover in which I cut a trap-door.  At
the bottom of the jar I put a paper bag, to serve as his habitual
residence.  I placed the jar on a table in my bedroom, so as to
have him under frequent observation.  He soon grew accustomed to
captivity and ended by becoming so familiar that he would come and
take from my fingers the live Fly which I gave him.  After killing
his victim with the fangs of his mandibles, he was not satisfied,
like most Spiders, to suck her head:  he chewed her whole body,
shoving it piecemeal into his mouth with his palpi, after which he
threw up the masticated teguments and swept them away from his
lodging.

'Having finished his meal, he nearly always made his toilet, which
consisted in brushing his palpi and mandibles, both inside and out,
with his front tarsi.  After that, he resumed his air of motionless
gravity.  The evening and the night were his time for taking his
walks abroad.  I often heard him scratching the paper of the bag.
These habits confirm the opinion, which I have already expressed
elsewhere, that most Spiders have the faculty of seeing by day and
night, like cats.

'On the 28th of June, my Tarantula cast his skin.  It was his last
moult and did not perceptibly alter either the colour of his attire
or the dimensions of his body.  On the 14th of July, I had to leave
Valencia; and I stayed away until the 23rd.  During this time, the
Tarantula fasted; I found him looking quite well on my return.  On
the 20th of August, I again left for a nine days' absence, which my
prisoner bore without food and without detriment to his health.  On
the 1st of October, I once more deserted the Tarantula, leaving him
without provisions.  On the 21st, I was fifty miles from Valencia
and, as I intended to remain there, I sent a servant to fetch him.
I was sorry to learn that he was not found in the jar, and I never
heard what became of him.

'I will end my observations on the Tarantulae with a short
description of a curious fight between those animals.  One day,
when I had had a successful hunt after these Lycosae, I picked out
two full-grown and very powerful males and brought them together in
a wide jar, in order to enjoy the sight of a combat to the death.
After walking round the arena several times, to try and avoid each
other, they were not slow in placing themselves in a warlike
attitude, as though at a given signal.  I saw them, to my surprise,
take their distances and sit up solemnly on their hind-legs, so as
mutually to present the shield of their chests to each other.
After watching them face to face like that for two minutes, during
which they had doubtless provoked each other by glances that
escaped my own, I saw them fling themselves upon each other at the
same time, twisting their legs round each other and obstinately
struggling to bite each other with the fangs of the mandibles.
Whether from fatigue or from convention, the combat was suspended;
there was a few seconds' truce; and each athlete moved away and
resumed his threatening posture.  This circumstance reminded me
that, in the strange fights between cats, there are also
suspensions of hostilities.  But the contest was soon renewed
between my two Tarantulae with increased fierceness.  One of them,
after holding victory in the balance for a while, was at last
thrown and received a mortal wound in the head.  He became the prey
of the conqueror, who tore open his skull and devoured it.  After
this curious duel, I kept the victorious Tarantula alive for
several weeks.'


My district does not boast the ordinary Tarantula, the Spider whose
habits have been described above by the Wizard of the Landes; but
it possesses an equivalent in the shape of the Black-bellied
Tarantula, or Narbonne Lycosa, half the size of the other, clad in
black velvet on the lower surface, especially under the belly, with
brown chevrons on the abdomen and grey and white rings around the
legs.  Her favourite home is the dry, pebbly ground, covered with
sun-scorched thyme.  In my harmas {6} laboratory there are quite
twenty of this Spider's burrows.  Rarely do I pass by one of these
haunts without giving a glance down the pit where gleam, like
diamonds, the four great eyes, the four telescopes, of the hermit.
The four others, which are much smaller, are not visible at that
depth.

Would I have greater riches, I have but to walk a hundred yards
from my house, on the neighbouring plateau, once a shady forest,
today a dreary solitude where the Cricket browses and the Wheat-ear
flits from stone to stone.  The love of lucre has laid waste the
land.  Because wine paid handsomely, they pulled up the forest to
plant the vine.  Then came the Phylloxera, the vine-stocks perished
and the once green table-land is now no more than a desolate
stretch where a few tufts of hardy grasses sprout among the
pebbles.  This wasteland is the Lycosa's paradise:  in an hour's
time, if need were, I should discover a hundred burrows within a
limited range.

These dwellings are pits about a foot deep, perpendicular at first
and then bent elbow-wise.  The average diameter is an inch.  On the
edge of the hole stands a kerb, formed of straw, bits and scraps of
all sorts and even small pebbles, the size of a hazel-nut.  The
whole is kept in place and cemented with silk.  Often, the Spider
confines herself to drawing together the dry blades of the nearest
grass, which she ties down with the straps from her spinnerets,
without removing the blades from the stems; often, also, she
rejects this scaffolding in favour of a masonry constructed of
small stones.  The nature of the kerb is decided by the nature of
the materials within the Lycosa's reach, in the close neighbourhood
of the building-yard.  There is no selection:  everything meets
with approval, provided that it be near at hand.

Economy of time, therefore, causes the defensive wall to vary
greatly as regards its constituent elements.  The height varies
also.  One enclosure is a turret an inch high; another amounts to a
mere rim.  All have their parts bound firmly together with silk;
and all have the same width as the subterranean channel, of which
they are the extension.  There is here no difference in diameter
between the underground manor and its outwork, nor do we behold, at
the opening, the platform which the turret leaves to give free play
to the Italian Tarantula's legs.  The Black-bellied Tarantula's
work takes the form of a well surmounted by its kerb.

When the soil is earthy and homogeneous, the architectural type is
free from obstructions and the Spider's dwelling is a cylindrical
tube; but, when the site is pebbly, the shape is modified according
to the exigencies of the digging.  In the second case, the lair is
often a rough, winding cave, at intervals along whose inner wall
stick blocks of stone avoided in the process of excavation.
Whether regular or irregular, the house is plastered to a certain
depth with a coat of silk, which prevents earth-slips and
facilitates scaling when a prompt exit is required.

Baglivi, in his unsophisticated Latin, teaches us how to catch the
Tarantula.  I became his rusticus insidiator;  I waved a spikelet
at the entrance of the burrow to imitate the humming of a Bee and
attract the attention of the Lycosa, who rushes out, thinking that
she is capturing a prey.  This method did not succeed with me.  The
Spider, it is true, leaves her remote apartments and comes a little
way up the vertical tube to enquire into the sounds at her door;
but the wily animal soon scents a trap; it remains motionless at
mid-height and, at the least alarm, goes down again to the branch
gallery, where it is invisible.

Leon Dufour's appears to me a better method if it were only
practicable in the conditions wherein I find myself.  To drive a
knife quickly into the ground, across the burrow, so as to cut off
the Tarantula's retreat when she is attracted by the spikelet and
standing on the upper floor, would be a manoeuvre certain of
success, if the soil were favourable.  Unfortunately, this is not
so in my case:  you might as well try to dig a knife into a block
of tufa.

Other stratagems become necessary.  Here are two which were
successful:  I recommend them to future Tarantula-hunters.  I
insert into the burrow, as far down as I can, a stalk with a fleshy
spikelet, which the Spider can bite into.  I move and turn and
twist my bait.  The Tarantula, when touched by the intruding body,
contemplates self-defence and bites the spikelet.  A slight
resistance informs my fingers that the animal has fallen into the
trap and seized the tip of the stalk in its fangs.  I draw it to
me, slowly, carefully; the Spider hauls from below, planting her
legs against the wall.  It comes, it rises.  I hide as best I may,
when the Spider enters the perpendicular tunnel:  if she saw me,
she would let go the bait and slip down again.  I thus bring her,
by degrees, to the orifice.  This is the difficult moment.  If I
continue the gentle movement, the Spider, feeling herself dragged
out of her home, would at once run back indoors.  It is impossible
to get the suspicious animal out by this means.  Therefore, when it
appears at the level of the ground, I give a sudden pull.
Surprised by this foul play, the Tarantula has no time to release
her hold; gripping the spikelet, she is thrown some inches away
from the burrow.  Her capture now becomes an easy matter.  Outside
her own house, the Lycosa is timid, as though scared, and hardly
capable of running away.  To push her with a straw into a paper bag
is the affair of a second.

It requires some patience to bring the Tarantula who has bitten
into the insidious spikelet to the entrance of the burrow.  The
following method is quicker:  I procure a supply of live Bumble-
bees.  I put one into a little bottle with a mouth just wide enough
to cover the opening of the burrow; and I turn the apparatus thus
baited over the said opening.  The powerful Bee at first flutters
and hums about her glass prison; then, perceiving a burrow similar
to that of her family, she enters it without much hesitation.  She
is extremely ill-advised:  while she goes down, the Spider comes
up; and the meeting takes place in the perpendicular passage.  For
a few moments, the ear perceives a sort of death-song:  it is the
humming of the Bumble-bee, protesting against the reception given
her.  This is followed by a long silence.  Then I remove the bottle
and dip a long-jawed forceps into the pit.  I withdraw the Bumble-
bee, motionless, dead, with hanging proboscis.  A terrible tragedy
must have happened.  The Spider follows, refusing to let go so rich
a booty.  Game and huntress are brought to the orifice.  Sometimes,
mistrustful, the Lycosa goes in again; but we have only to leave
the Bumble-bee on the threshold of the door, or even a few inches
away, to see her reappear, issue from her fortress and daringly
recapture her prey.  This is the moment:  the house is closed with
the finger, or a pebble and, as Baglivi says, 'captatur tamen ista
a rustico insidiatore,' to which I will add, 'adjuvante Bombo.' {7}

The object of these hunting methods was not exactly to obtain
Tarantulae; I had not the least wish to rear the Spider in a
bottle.  I was interested in a different matter.  Here, thought I,
is an ardent huntress, living solely by her trade.  She does not
prepare preserved foodstuffs for her offspring; {8} she herself
feeds on the prey which she catches.  She is not a 'paralyzer,' {9}
who cleverly spares her quarry so as to leave it a glimmer of life
and keep it fresh for weeks at a time; she is a killer, who makes a
meal off her capture on the spot.  With her, there is no methodical
vivisection, which destroys movement without entirely destroying
life, but absolute death, as sudden as possible, which protects the
assailant from the counter-attacks of the assailed.

Her game, moreover, is essentially bulky and not always of the most
peaceful character.  This Diana, ambushed in her tower, needs a
prey worthy of her prowess.  The big Grass-hopper, with the
powerful jaws; the irascible Wasp; the Bee, the Bumble-bee and
other wearers of poisoned daggers must fall into the ambuscade from
time to time.  The duel is nearly equal in point of weapons.  To
the venomous fangs of the Lycosa the Wasp opposes her venomous
stiletto.  Which of the two bandits shall have the best of it?  The
struggle is a hand-to-hand one.  The Tarantula has no secondary
means of defence, no cord to bind her victim, no trap to subdue
her.  When the Epeira, or Garden Spider, sees an insect entangled
in her great upright web, she hastens up and covers the captive
with corded meshes and silk ribbons by the armful, making all
resistance impossible.  When the prey is solidly bound, a prick is
carefully administered with the poison-fangs; then the Spider
retires, waiting for the death-throes to calm down, after which the
huntress comes back to the game.  In these conditions, there is no
serious danger.

In the case of the Lycosa, the job is riskier.  She has naught to
serve her but her courage and her fangs and is obliged to leap upon
the formidable prey, to master it by her dexterity, to annihilate
it, in a measure, by her swift-slaying talent.

Annihilate is the word:  the Bumble-bees whom I draw from the fatal
hole are a sufficient proof.  As soon as that shrill buzzing, which
I called the death-song, ceases, in vain I hasten to insert my
forceps:  I always bring out the insect dead, with slack proboscis
and limp legs.  Scarce a few quivers of those legs tell me that it
is a quite recent corpse.  The Bumble-bee's death is instantaneous.
Each time that I take a fresh victim from the terrible slaughter-
house, my surprise is renewed at the sight of its sudden
immobility.

Nevertheless, both animals have very nearly the same strength; for
I choose my Bumble-bees from among the largest (Bombus hortorum and
B. terrestris).  Their weapons are almost equal:  the Bee's dart
can bear comparison with the Spider's fangs; the sting of the first
seems to me as formidable as the bite of the second.  How comes it
that the Tarantula always has the upper hand and this moreover in a
very short conflict, whence she emerges unscathed?  There must
certainly be some cunning strategy on her part.  Subtle though her
poison may be, I cannot believe that its mere injection, at any
point whatever of the victim, is enough to produce so prompt a
catastrophe.  The ill-famed rattle-snake does not kill so quickly,
takes hours to achieve that for which the Tarantula does not
require a second.  We must, therefore, look for an explanation of
this sudden death to the vital importance of the point attacked by
the Spider, rather than to the virulence of the poison.

What is this point?  It is impossible to recognize it on the
Bumble-bees.  They enter the burrow; and the murder is committed
far from sight.  Nor does the lens discover any wound upon the
corpse, so delicate are the weapons that produce it.  One would
have to see the two adversaries engage in a direct contest.  I have
often tried to place a Tarantula and a Bumble-bee face to face in
the same bottle.  The two animals mutually flee each other, each
being as much upset as the other at its captivity.  I have kept
them together for twenty-four hours, without aggressive display on
either side.  Thinking more of their prison than of attacking each
other, they temporize, as though indifferent.  The experiment has
always been fruitless.  I have succeeded with Bees and Wasps, but
the murder has been committed at night and has taught me nothing.
I would find both insects, next morning, reduced to a jelly under
the Spider's mandibles.  A weak prey is a mouthful which the Spider
reserves for the calm of the night.  A prey capable of resistance
is not attacked in captivity.  The prisoner's anxiety cools the
hunter's ardour.

The arena of a large bottle enables each athlete to keep out of the
other's way, respected by her adversary, who is respected in her
turn.  Let us reduce the lists, diminish the enclosure.  I put
Bumble-bee and Tarantula into a test-tube that has only room for
one at the bottom.  A lively brawl ensues, without serious results.
If the Bumble-bee be underneath, she lies down on her back and with
her legs wards off the other as much as she can.  I do not see her
draw her sting.  The Spider, meanwhile, embracing the whole
circumference of the enclosure with her long legs, hoists herself a
little upon the slippery surface and removes herself as far as
possible from her adversary.  There, motionless, she awaits events,
which are soon disturbed by the fussy Bumble-bee.  Should the
latter occupy the upper position, the Tarantula protects herself by
drawing up her legs, which keep the enemy at a distance.  In short,
save for sharp scuffles when the two champions are in touch,
nothing happens that deserves attention.  There is no duel to the
death in the narrow arena of the test-tube, any more than in the
wider lists afforded by the bottle.  Utterly timid once she is away
from home, the Spider obstinately refuses the battle; nor will the
Bumble-bee, giddy though she be, think of striking the first blow.
I abandon experiments in my study.

We must go direct to the spot and force the duel upon the
Tarantula, who is full of pluck in her own stronghold.  Only,
instead of the Bumble-bee, who enters the burrow and conceals her
death from our eyes, it is necessary to substitute another
adversary, less inclined to penetrate underground.  There abounds
in the garden, at this moment, on the flowers of the common clary,
one of the largest and most powerful Bees that haunt my district,
the Carpenter-bee (Xylocopa violacea), clad in black velvet, with
wings of purple gauze.  Her size, which is nearly an inch, exceeds
that of the Bumble-bee.  Her sting is excruciating and produces a
swelling that long continues painful.  I have very exact memories
on this subject, memories that have cost me dear.  Here indeed is
an antagonist worthy of the Tarantula, if I succeed in inducing the
Spider to accept her.  I place a certain number, one by one, in
bottles small in capacity, but having a wide neck capable of
surrounding the entrance to the burrow.

As the prey which I am about to offer is capable of overawing the
huntress, I select from among the Tarantulae the lustiest, the
boldest, those most stimulated by hunger.  The spikeleted stalk is
pushed into the burrow.  When the Spider hastens up at once, when
she is of a good size, when she climbs boldly to the aperture of
her dwelling, she is admitted to the tourney; otherwise, she is
refused.  The bottle, baited with a Carpenter-bee, is placed upside
down over the door of one of the elect.  The Bee buzzes gravely in
her glass bell; the huntress mounts from the recesses of the cave;
she is on the threshold, but inside; she looks; she waits.  I also
wait.  The quarters, the half-hours pass:  nothing.  The Spider
goes down again:  she has probably judged the attempt too
dangerous.  I move to a second, a third, a fourth burrow:  still
nothing; the huntress refuses to leave her lair.

Fortune at last smiles upon my patience, which has been heavily
tried by all these prudent retreats and particularly by the fierce
heat of the dog-days.  A Spider suddenly rushes from her hole:  she
has been rendered warlike, doubtless, by prolonged abstinence.  The
tragedy that happens under the cover of the bottle lasts for but
the twinkling of an eye.  It is over:  the sturdy Carpenter-bee is
dead.  Where did the murderess strike her?  That is easily
ascertained:  the Tarantula has not let go; and her fangs are
planted in the nape of the neck.  The assassin has the knowledge
which I suspected:  she has made for the essentially vital centre,
she has stung the insect's cervical ganglia with her poison-fangs.
In short, she has bitten the only point a lesion in which produces
sudden death.  I was delighted with this murderous skill, which
made amends for the blistering which my skin received in the sun.

Once is not custom:  one swallow does not make a summer.  Is what I
have just seen due to accident or to premeditation?  I turn to
other Lycosae.  Many, a deal too many for my patience, stubbornly
refuse to dart from their haunts in order to attack the Carpenter-
bee.  The formidable quarry is too much for their daring.  Shall
not hunger, which brings the wolf from the wood, also bring the
Tarantula out of her hole?  Two, apparently more famished than the
rest, do at last pounce upon the Bee and repeat the scene of murder
before my eyes.  The prey, again bitten in the neck, exclusively in
the neck, dies on the instant.  Three murders, perpetrated in my
presence under identical conditions, represent the fruits of my
experiment pursued, on two occasions, from eight o'clock in the
morning until twelve midday.

I had seen enough.  The quick insect-killer had taught me her trade
as had the paralyzer {10} before her:  she had shown me that she is
thoroughly versed in the art of the butcher of the Pampas. {11}
The Tarantula is an accomplished desnucador.  It remained to me to
confirm the open-air experiment with experiments in the privacy of
my study.  I therefore got together a menagerie of these poisonous
Spiders, so as to judge of the virulence of their venom and its
effect according to the part of the body injured by the fangs.  A
dozen bottles and test-tubes received the prisoners, whom I
captured by the methods known to the reader.  To one inclined to
scream at the sight of a Spider, my study, filled with odious
Lycosae, would have presented a very uncanny appearance.

Though the Tarantula scorns or rather fears to attack an adversary
placed in her presence in a bottle, she scarcely hesitates to bite
what is thrust beneath her fangs.  I take her by the thorax with my
forceps and present to her mouth the animal which I wish stung.
Forthwith, if the Spider be not already tired by experiments, the
fangs are raised and inserted.  I first tried the effects of the
bite upon the Carpenter-bee.  When struck in the neck, the Bee
succumbs at once.  It was the lightning death which I witnessed on
the threshold of the burrows.  When struck in the abdomen and then
placed in a large bottle that leaves its movements free, the insect
seems, at first, to have suffered no serious injury.  It flutters
about and buzzes.  But half an hour has not elapsed before death is
imminent.  The insect lies motionless upon its back or side.  At
most, a few movements of the legs, a slight pulsation of the belly,
continuing till the morrow, proclaim that life has not yet entirely
departed.  Then everything ceases:  the Carpenter-bee is a corpse.

The importance of this experiment compels our attention.  When
stung in the neck, the powerful Bee dies on the spot; and the
Spider has not to fear the dangers of a desperate struggle.  Stung
elsewhere, in the abdomen, the insect is capable, for nearly half
an hour, of making use of its dart, its mandibles, its legs; and
woe to the Lycosa whom the stiletto reaches.  I have seen some who,
stabbed in the mouth while biting close to the sting, died of the
wound within the twenty-four hours.  That dangerous prey,
therefore, requires instantaneous death, produced by the injury to
the nerve-centres of the neck; otherwise, the hunter's life would
often be in jeopardy.

The Grasshopper order supplied me with a second series of victims:
Green Grasshoppers as long as one's finger, large-headed Locusts,
Ephippigerae. {12}  The same result follows when these are bitten
in the neck:  lightning death.  When injured elsewhere, notably in
the abdomen, the subject of the experiment resists for some time.
I have seen a Grasshopper, bitten in the belly, cling firmly for
fifteen hours to the smooth, upright wall of the glass bell that
constituted his prison.  At last, he dropped off and died.  Where
the Bee, that delicate organism, succumbs in less than half an
hour, the Grasshopper, coarse ruminant that he is, resists for a
whole day.  Put aside these differences, caused by unequal degrees
of organic sensitiveness, and we sum up as follows:  when bitten by
the Tarantula in the neck, an insect, chosen from among the
largest, dies on the spot; when bitten elsewhere, it perishes also,
but after a lapse of time which varies considerably in the
different entomological orders.

This explains the long hesitation of the Tarantula, so wearisome to
the experimenter when he presents to her, at the entrance to the
burrow, a rich, but dangerous prey.  The majority refuse to fling
themselves upon the Carpenter-bee.  The fact is that a quarry of
this kind cannot be seized recklessly:  the huntress who missed her
stroke by biting at random would do so at the risk of her life.
The nape of the neck alone possesses the desired vulnerability.
The adversary must be nipped there and no elsewhere.  Not to floor
her at once would mean to irritate her and make her more dangerous
than ever.  The Spider is well aware of this.  In the safe shelter
of her threshold, therefore, prepared to beat a quick retreat if
necessary, she watches for the favourable moment; she waits for the
big Bee to face her, when the neck is easily grabbed.  If this
condition of success offer, she leaps out and acts; if not, weary
of the violent evolutions of the quarry, she retires indoors.  And
that, no doubt, is why it took me two sittings of four hours apiece
to witness three assassinations.

Formerly, instructed by the paralysing Wasps, I had myself tried to
produce paralysis by injecting a drop of ammonia into the thorax of
those insects, such as Weevils, Buprestes, {13} and Dung-beetles,
whose compact nervous system assists this physiological operation.
I showed myself a ready pupil to my masters' teaching and used to
paralyze a Buprestis or a Weevil almost as well as a Cerceris {14}
could have done.  Why should I not to-day imitate that expert
butcher, the Tarantula?  With the point of a fine needle, I inject
a tiny drop of ammonia at the base of the skull of a Carpenter-bee
or a Grasshopper.  The insect succumbs then and there, without any
other movement than wild convulsions.  When attacked by the acrid
fluid, the cervical ganglia cease to do their work; and death
ensues.  Nevertheless, this death is not immediate; the throes last
for some time.  The experiment is not wholly satisfactory as
regards suddenness.  Why?  Because the liquid which I employ,
ammonia, cannot be compared, for deadly efficacy, with the Lycosa's
poison, a pretty formidable poison, as we shall see.

I make a Tarantula bite the leg of a young, well-fledged Sparrow,
ready to leave the nest.  A drop of blood flows; the wounded spot
is surrounded by a reddish circle, changing to purple.  The bird
almost immediately loses the use of its leg, which drags, with the
toes doubled in; it hops upon the other.  Apart from this, the
patient does not seem to trouble much about his hurt; his appetite
is good.  My daughters feed him on Flies, bread-crumb, apricot-
pulp.  He is sure to get well, he will recover his strength; the
poor victim of the curiosity of science will be restored to
liberty.  This is the wish, the intention of us all.  Twelve hours
later, the hope of a cure increases; the invalid takes nourishment
readily; he clamours for it, if we keep him waiting.  But the leg
still drags.  I set this down to a temporary paralysis which will
soon disappear.  Two days after, he refuses his food.  Wrapping
himself in his stoicism and his rumpled feathers, the Sparrow
hunches into a ball, now motionless, now twitching.  My girls take
him in the hollow of their hands and warm him with their breath.
The spasms become more frequent.  A gasp proclaims that all is
over.  The bird is dead.

There was a certain coolness among us at the evening-meal.  I read
mute reproaches, because of my experiment, in the eyes of my home-
circle; I read an unspoken accusation of cruelty all around me.
The death of the unfortunate Sparrow had saddened the whole family.
I myself was not without some remorse of conscience:  the poor
result achieved seemed to me too dearly bought.  I am not made of
the stuff of those who, without turning a hair, rip up live Dogs to
find out nothing in particular.

Nevertheless, I had the courage to start afresh, this time on a
Mole caught ravaging a bed of lettuces.  There was a danger lest my
captive, with his famished stomach, should leave things in doubt,
if we had to keep him for a few days.  He might die not of his
wound, but of inanition, if I did not succeed in giving him
suitable food, fairly plentiful and dispensed at fairly frequent
intervals.  In that case, I ran a risk of ascribing to the poison
what might well be the result of starvation.  I must therefore
begin by finding out if it was possible for me to keep the Mole
alive in captivity.  The animal was put into a large receptacle
from which it could not get out and fed on a varied diet of
insects--Beetles, Grasshoppers, especially Cicadae {15}--which it
crunched up with an excellent appetite.  Twenty-four hours of this
regimen convinced me that the Mole was making the best of the bill
of fare and taking kindly to his captivity.

I make the Tarantula bite him at the tip of the snout.  When
replaced in his cage, the Mole keeps on scratching his nose with
his broad paws.  The thing seems to burn, to itch.  Henceforth,
less and less of the provision of Cicadae is consumed; on the
evening of the following day, it is refused altogether.  About
thirty-six hours after being bitten, the Mole dies during the night
and certainly not from inanition, for there are still half a dozen
live Cicadae in the receptacle, as well as a few Beetles.

The bite of the Black-bellied Tarantula is therefore dangerous to
other animals than insects:  it is fatal to the Sparrow, it is
fatal to the Mole.  Up to what point are we to generalize?  I do
not know, because my enquiries extended no further.  Nevertheless,
judging from the little that I saw, it appears to me that the bite
of this Spider is not an accident which man can afford to treat
lightly.  This is all that I have to say to the doctors.

To the philosophical entomologists I have something else to say:  I
have to call their attention to the consummate knowledge of the
insect-killers, which vies with that of the paralyzers.  I speak of
insect-killers in the plural, for the Tarantula must share her
deadly art with a host of other Spiders, especially with those who
hunt without nets.  These insect-killers, who live on their prey,
strike the game dead instantaneously by stinging the nerve-centres
of the neck; the paralyzers, on the other hand, who wish to keep
the food fresh for their larvae, destroy the power of movement by
stinging the game in the other nerve-centres.  Both of them attack
the nervous chain, but they select the point according to the
object to be attained.  If death be desired, sudden death, free
from danger to the huntress, the insect is attacked in the neck; if
mere paralysis be required, the neck is respected and the lower
segments--sometimes one alone, sometimes three, sometimes all or
nearly all, according to the special organization of the victim--
receive the dagger-thrust.

Even the paralyzers, at least some of them, are acquainted with the
immense vital importance of the nerve-centres of the neck.  We have
seen the Hairy Ammophila munching the caterpillar's brain, the
Languedocian Sphex munching the brain of the Ephippigera, with the
object of inducing a passing torpor.  But they simply squeeze the
brain and do even this with a wise discretion; they are careful not
to drive their sting into this fundamental centre of life; not one
of them ever thinks of doing so, for the result would be a corpse
which the larva would despise.  The Spider, on the other hand,
inserts her double dirk there and there alone; any elsewhere it
would inflict a wound likely to increase resistance through
irritation.  She wants a venison for consumption without delay and
brutally thrusts her fangs into the spot which the others so
conscientiously respect.

If the instinct of these scientific murderers is not, in both
cases, an inborn predisposition, inseparable from the animal, but
an acquired habit, then I rack my brain in vain to understand how
that habit can have been acquired.  Shroud these facts in theoretic
mists as much as you will, you shall never succeed in veiling the
glaring evidence which they afford of a pre-established order of
things.



CHAPTER II:  THE BANDED EPEIRA



In the inclement season of the year, when the insect has nothing to
do and retires to winter quarters, the observer profits by the
mildness of the sunny nooks and grubs in the sand, lifts the
stones, searches the brushwood; and often he is stirred with a
pleasurable excitement, when he lights upon some ingenious work of
art, discovered unawares.  Happy are the simple of heart whose
ambition is satisfied with such treasure-trove!  I wish them all
the joys which it has brought me and which it will continue to
bring me, despite the vexations of life, which grow ever more
bitter as the years follow their swift downward course.

Should the seekers rummage among the wild grasses in the osier-beds
and copses, I wish them the delight of finding the wonderful object
that, at this moment, lies before my eyes.  It is the work of a
Spider, the nest of the Banded Epeira (Epeira fasciata, LATR.).

A Spider is not an insect, according to the rules of
classification; and as such the Epeira seems out of place here.
{16}  A fig for systems!  It is immaterial to the student of
instinct whether the animal have eight legs instead of six, or
pulmonary sacs instead of air-tubes.  Besides, the Araneida belong
to the group of segmented animals, organized in sections placed end
to end, a structure to which the terms 'insect' and 'entomology'
both refer.

Formerly, to describe this group, people said 'articulate animals,'
an expression which possessed the drawback of not jarring on the
ear and of being understood by all.  This is out of date.
Nowadays, they use the euphonious term 'Arthropoda.'  And to think
that there are men who question the existence of progress!
Infidels!  Say, 'articulate,' first; then roll out, 'Arthropoda;'
and you shall see whether zoological science is not progressing!

In bearing and colouring, Epeira fasciata is the handsomest of the
Spiders of the South.  On her fat belly, a mighty silk-warehouse
nearly as large as a hazel-nut, are alternate yellow, black and
silver sashes, to which she owes her epithet of Banded.  Around
that portly abdomen, the eight long legs, with their dark- and
pale-brown rings, radiate like spokes.

Any small prey suits her; and, as long as she can find supports for
her web, she settles wherever the Locust hops, wherever the Fly
hovers, wherever the Dragon-fly dances or the Butterfly flits.  As
a rule, because of the greater abundance of game, she spreads her
toils across some brooklet, from bank to bank among the rushes.
She also stretches them, but not assiduously, in the thickets of
evergreen oak, on the slopes with the scrubby greenswards, dear to
the Grasshoppers.

Her hunting-weapon is a large upright web, whose outer boundary,
which varies according to the disposition of the ground, is
fastened to the neighbouring branches by a number of moorings.  The
structure is that adopted by the other weaving Spiders.  Straight
threads radiate at equal intervals from a central point.  Over this
framework runs a continuous spiral thread, forming chords, or
crossbars, from the centre to the circumference.  It is
magnificently large and magnificently symmetrical.

In the lower part of the web, starting from the centre, a wide
opaque ribbon descends zigzag-wise across the radii.  This is the
Epeira's trade-mark, the flourish of an artist initialling his
creation.  'Fecit So-and-so,' she seems to say, when giving the
last throw of the shuttle to her handiwork.

That the Spider feels satisfied when, after passing and repassing
from spoke to spoke, she finishes her spiral, is beyond a doubt:
the work achieved ensures her food for a few days to come.  But, in
this particular case, the vanity of the spinstress has naught to
say to the matter:  the strong silk zigzag is added to impart
greater firmness to the web.

Increased resistance is not superfluous, for the net is sometimes
exposed to severe tests.  The Epeira cannot pick and choose her
prizes.  Seated motionless in the centre of her web, her eight legs
widespread to feel the shaking of the network in any direction, she
waits for what luck will bring her:  now some giddy weakling unable
to control its flight, anon some powerful prey rushing headlong
with a reckless bound.

The Locust in particular, the fiery Locust, who releases the spring
of his long shanks at random, often falls into the trap.  One
imagines that his strength ought to frighten the Spider; the kick
of his spurred levers should enable him to make a hole, then and
there, in the web and to get away.  But not at all.  If he does not
free himself at the first effort, the Locust is lost.

Turning her back on the game, the Epeira works all her spinnerets,
pierced like the rose of a watering-pot, at one and the same time.
The silky spray is gathered by the hind-legs, which are longer than
the others and open into a wide arc to allow the stream to spread.
Thanks to this artifice, the Epeira this time obtains not a thread,
but an iridescent sheet, a sort of clouded fan wherein the
component threads are kept almost separate.  The two hind-legs
fling this shroud gradually, by rapid alternate armfuls, while, at
the same time, they turn the prey over and over, swathing it
completely.

The ancient retiarius, when pitted against a powerful wild beast,
appeared in the arena with a rope-net folded over his left
shoulder.  The animal made its spring.  The man, with a sudden
movement of his right arm, cast the net after the manner of the
fishermen; he covered the beast and tangled it in the meshes.  A
thrust of the trident gave the quietus to the vanquished foe.

The Epeira acts in like fashion, with this advantage, that she is
able to renew her armful of fetters.  Should the first not suffice,
a second instantly follows and another and yet another, until the
reserves of silk become exhausted.

When all movement ceases under the snowy winding-sheet, the Spider
goes up to her bound prisoner.  She has a better weapon than the
bestiarius' trident:  she has her poison-fangs.  She gnaws at the
Locust, without undue persistence, and then withdraws, leaving the
torpid patient to pine away.

Soon she comes back to her motionless head of game:  she sucks it,
drains it, repeatedly changing her point of attack.  At last, the
clean-bled remains are flung out of the net and the Spider returns
to her ambush in the centre of the web.

What the Epeira sucks is not a corpse, but a numbed body.  If I
remove the Locust immediately after he has been bitten and release
him from the silken sheath, the patient recovers his strength to
such an extent that he seems, at first, to have suffered no injury.
The Spider, therefore, does not kill her capture before sucking its
juices; she is content to deprive it of the power of motion by
producing a state of torpor.  Perhaps this kindlier bite gives her
greater facility in working her pump.  The humours, if stagnant, in
a corpse, would not respond so readily to the action of the sucker;
they are more easily extracted from a live body, in which they move
about.

The Epeira, therefore, being a drinker of blood, moderates the
virulence of her sting, even with victims of appalling size, so
sure is she of her retiarian art.  The long-legged Tryxalis, {17}
the corpulent Grey Locust, the largest of our Grasshoppers are
accepted without hesitation and sucked dry as soon as numbed.
Those giants, capable of making a hole in the net and passing
through it in their impetuous onrush, can be but rarely caught.  I
myself place them on the web.  The Spider does the rest.  Lavishing
her silky spray, she swathes them and then sucks the body at her
ease.  With an increased expenditure of the spinnerets, the very
biggest game is mastered as successfully as the everyday prey.

I have seen even better than that.  This time, my subject is the
Silky Epeira (Epeira sericea, OLIV.), with a broad, festooned,
silvery abdomen.  Like that of the other, her web is large, upright
and 'signed' with a zigzag ribbon.  I place upon it a Praying
Mantis, {18} a well-developed specimen, quite capable of changing
roles, should circumstances permit, and herself making a meal off
her assailant.  It is a question no longer of capturing a peaceful
Locust, but a fierce and powerful ogre, who would rip open the
Epeira's paunch with one blow of her harpoons.

Will the Spider dare?  Not immediately.  Motionless in the centre
of her net, she consults her strength before attacking the
formidable quarry; she waits until the struggling prey has its
claws more thickly entangled.  At last, she approaches.  The Mantis
curls her belly; lifts her wings like vertical sails; opens her
saw-toothed arm-pieces; in short, adopts the spectral attitude
which she employs when delivering battle.

The Spider disregards these menaces.  Spreading wide her
spinnerets, she pumps out sheets of silk which the hind-legs draw
out, expand and fling without stint in alternate armfuls.  Under
this shower of threads, the Mantis' terrible saws, the lethal legs,
quickly disappear from sight, as do the wings, still erected in the
spectral posture.

Meanwhile, the swathed one gives sudden jerks, which make the
Spider fall out of her web.  The accident is provided for.  A
safety-cord, emitted at the same instant by the spinnerets, keeps
the Epeira hanging, swinging in space.  When calm is restored, she
packs her cord and climbs up again.  The heavy paunch and the hind-
legs are now bound.  The flow slackens, the silk comes only in thin
sheets.  Fortunately, the business is done.  The prey is invisible
under the thick shroud.

The Spider retires without giving a bite.  To master the terrible
quarry, she has spent the whole reserves of her spinning-mill,
enough to weave many good-sized webs.  With this heap of shackles,
further precautions are superfluous.

After a short rest in the centre of the net, she comes down to
dinner.  Slight incisions are made in different parts of the prize,
now here, now there; and the Spider puts her mouth to each and
sucks the blood of her prey.  The meal is long protracted, so rich
is the dish.  For ten hours, I watch the insatiable glutton, who
changes her point of attack as each wound sucked dries up.  Night
comes and robs me of the finish of the unbridled debauch.  Next
morning, the drained Mantis lies upon the ground.  The Ants are
eagerly devouring the remains.

The eminent talents of the Epeirae are displayed to even better
purpose in the industrial business of motherhood than in the art of
the chase.  The silk bag, the nest, in which the Banded Epeira
houses her eggs, is a much greater marvel than the bird's nest.  In
shape, it is an inverted balloon, nearly the size of a Pigeon's
egg.  The top tapers like a pear and is cut short and crowned with
a scalloped rim, the corners of which are lengthened by means of
moorings that fasten the object to the adjoining twigs.  The whole,
a graceful ovoid, hangs straight down, amid a few threads that
steady it.

The top is hollowed into a crater closed with a silky padding.
Every other part is contained in the general wrapper, formed of
thick, compact white satin, difficult to break and impervious to
moisture.  Brown and even black silk, laid out in abroad ribbons,
in spindle-shaped patterns, in fanciful meridian waves, adorns the
upper portion of the exterior.  The part played by this fabric is
self-evident:  it is a waterproof cover which neither dew nor rain
can penetrate.

Exposed to all the inclemencies of the weather, among the dead
grasses, close to the ground, the Epeira's nest has also to protect
its contents from the winter cold.  Let us cut the wrapper with our
scissors.  Underneath, we find a thick layer of reddish-brown silk,
not worked into a fabric this time, but puffed into an extra-fine
wadding.  It is a fleecy cloud, an incomparable quilt, softer than
any swan's-down.  This is the screen set up against loss of heat.

And what does this cosy mass protect?  See:  in the middle of the
eiderdown hangs a cylindrical pocket, round at the bottom, cut
square at the top and closed with a padded lid.  It is made of
extremely fine satin; it contains the Epeira's eggs, pretty little
orange-coloured beads, which, glued together, form a globule the
size of a pea.  This is the treasure to be defended against the
asperities of the winter.

Now that we know the structure of the work, let us try to see in
what manner the spinstress sets about it.  The observation is not
an easy one, for the Banded Epeira is a night-worker.  She needs
nocturnal quiet in order not to go astray amid the complicated
rules that guide her industry.  Now and again, at very early hours
in the morning, I have happened to catch her working, which enables
me to sum up the progress of the operations.

My subjects are busy in their bell-shaped cages, at about the
middle of August.  A scaffolding is first run up, at the top of the
dome; it consists of a few stretched threads.  The wire trellis
represents the twigs and the blades of grass which the Spider, if
at liberty, would have used as suspension-points.  The loom works
on this shaky support.  The Epeira does not see what she is doing;
she turns her back on her task.  The machinery is so well put
together that the whole thing goes automatically.

The tip of the abdomen sways, a little to the right, a little to
the left, rises and falls, while the Spider moves slowly round and
round.  The thread paid out is single.  The hind-legs draw it out
and place it in position on that which is already done.  Thus is
formed a satin receptacle the rim of which is gradually raised
until it becomes a bag about a centimetre deep. {39}  The texture
is of the daintiest.  Guy-ropes bind it to the nearest threads and
keep it stretched, especially at the mouth.

Then the spinnerets take a rest and the turn of the ovaries comes.
A continuous shower of eggs falls into the bag, which is filled to
the top.  The capacity of the receptacle has been so nicely
calculated that there is room for all the eggs, without leaving any
space unoccupied.  When the Spider has finished and retires, I
catch a momentary glimpse of the heap of orange-coloured eggs; but
the work of the spinnerets is at once resumed.

The next business is to close the bag.  The machinery works a
little differently.  The tip of the belly no longer sways from side
to side.  It sinks and touches a point; it retreats, sinks again
and touches another point, first here, then there, describing
inextricable zigzags.  At the same time, the hind-legs tread the
material emitted.  The result is no longer a stuff, but a felt, a
blanketing.

Around the satin capsule, which contains the eggs, is the eiderdown
destined to keep out the cold.  The youngsters will bide for some
time in this soft shelter, to strengthen their joints and prepare
for the final exodus.  It does not take long to make.  The
spinning-mill suddenly alters the raw material:  it was turning out
white silk; it now furnishes reddish-brown silk, finer than the
other and issuing in clouds which the hind-legs, those dexterous
carders, beat into a sort of froth.  The egg-pocket disappears,
drowned in this exquisite wadding.

The balloon-shape is already outlined; the top of the work tapers
to a neck.  The Spider, moving up and down, tacking first to one
side and then to the other, from the very first spray marks out the
graceful form as accurately as though she carried a compass in her
abdomen.

Then, once again, with the same suddenness, the material changes.
The white silk reappears, wrought into thread.  This is the moment
to weave the outer wrapper.  Because of the thickness of the stuff
and the density of its texture, this operation is the longest of
the series.

First, a few threads are flung out, hither and thither, to keep the
layer of wadding in position.  The Epeira takes special pains with
the edge of the neck, where she fashions an indented border, the
angles of which, prolonged with cords or lines, form the main
support of the building.  The spinnerets never touch this part
without giving it, each time, until the end of the work, a certain
added solidity, necessary to secure the stability of the balloon.
The suspensory indentations soon outline a crater which needs
plugging.  The Spider closes the bag with a padded stopper similar
to that with which she sealed the egg-pocket.

When these arrangements are made, the real manufacture of the
wrapper begins.  The Spider goes backwards and forwards, turns and
turns again.  The spinnerets do not touch the fabric.  With a
rhythmical, alternate movement, the hind-legs, the sole implements
employed, draw the thread, seize it in their combs and apply it to
the work, while the tip of the abdomen sways methodically to and
fro.

In this way, the silken fibre is distributed in an even zigzag, of
almost geometrical precision and comparable with that of the cotton
thread which the machines in our factories roll so neatly into
balls.  And this is repeated all over the surface of the work, for
the Spider shifts her position a little at every moment.

At fairly frequent intervals, the tip of the abdomen is lifted to
the mouth of the balloon; and then the spinnerets really touch the
fringed edge.  The length of contact is even considerable.  We
find, therefore, that the thread is stuck in this star-shaped
fringe, the foundation of the building and the crux of the whole,
while every elsewhere it is simply laid on, in a manner determined
by the movements of the hind-legs.  If we wished to unwind the
work, the thread would break at the margin; at any other point, it
would unroll.

The Epeira ends her web with a dead-white, angular flourish; she
ends her nest with brown mouldings, which run down, irregularly,
from the marginal junction to the bulging middle.  For this
purpose, she makes use, for the third time, of a different silk;
she now produces silk of a dark hue, varying from russet to black.
The spinnerets distribute the material with a wide longitudinal
swing, from pole to pole; and the hind-legs apply it in capricious
ribbons.  When this is done, the work is finished.  The Spider
moves away with slow strides, without giving a glance at the bag.
The rest does not interest her:  time and the sun will see to it.

She felt her hour at hand and came down from her web.  Near by, in
the rank grass, she wove the tabernacle of her offspring and, in so
doing, drained her resources.  To resume her hunting-post, to
return to her web would be useless to her:  she has not the
wherewithal to bind the prey.  Besides, the fine appetite of former
days has gone.  Withered and languid, she drags out her existence
for a few days and, at last, dies.  This is how things happen in my
cages; this is how they must happen in the brushwood.

The Silky Epeira (Epeira sericea, OLIV.) excels the Banded Epeira
in the manufacture of big hunting-nets, but she is less gifted in
the art of nest-building.  She gives her nest the inelegant form of
an obtuse cone.  The opening of this pocket is very wide and is
scalloped into lobes by which the edifice is slung.  It is closed
with a large lid, half satin, half swan's-down.  The rest is a
stout white fabric, frequently covered with irregular brown
streaks.

The difference between the work of the two Epeirae does not extend
beyond the wrapper, which is an obtuse cone in the one case and a
balloon in the other.  The same internal arrangements prevail
behind this frontage:  first, a flossy quilt; next, a little keg in
which the eggs are packed.  Though the two Spiders build the outer
wall according to special architectural rules, they both employ the
same means as a protection against the cold.

As we see, the egg-bag of the Epeirae, particularly that of the
Banded Epeira, is an important and complex work.  Various materials
enter into its composition:  white silk, red silk, brown silk;
moreover, these materials are worked into dissimilar products:
stout cloth, soft eiderdown, dainty satinette, porous felt.  And
all of this comes from the same workshop that weaves the hunting-
net, warps the zigzag ribbon-band and casts an entangling shroud
over the prey.

What a wonderful silk-factory it is!  With a very simple and never-
varying plant, consisting of the hind-legs and the spinnerets, it
produces, by turns, rope-maker's, spinner's, weaver's, ribbon-
maker's and fuller's work.  How does the Spider direct an
establishment of this kind?  How does she obtain, at will, skeins
of diverse hues and grades?  How does she turn them out, first in
this fashion, then in that?  I see the results, but I do not
understand the machinery and still less the process.  It beats me
altogether.

The Spider also sometimes loses her head in her difficult trade,
when some trouble disturbs the peace of her nocturnal labours.  I
do not provoke this trouble myself, for I am not present at those
unseasonable hours.  It is simply due to the conditions prevailing
in my menagerie.

In their natural state, the Epeirae settle separately, at long
distances from one another.  Each has her own hunting-grounds,
where there is no reason to fear the competition that would result
from the close proximity of the nets.  In my cages, on the other
hand, there is cohabitation.  In order to save space, I lodge two
or three Epeirae in the same cage.  My easy-going captives live
together in peace.  There is no strife between them, no encroaching
on the neighbour's property.  Each of them weaves herself a
rudimentary web, as far from the rest as possible, and here, rapt
in contemplation, as though indifferent to what the others are
doing, she awaits the hop of the Locust.

Nevertheless, these close quarters have their drawbacks when
laying-time arrives.  The cords by which the different
establishments are hung interlace and criss-cross in a confused
network.  When one of them shakes, all the others are more or less
affected.  This is enough to distract the layer from her business
and to make her do silly things.  Here are two instances.

A bag has been woven during the night.  I find it, when I visit the
cage in the morning, hanging from the trellis-work and completed.
It is perfect, as regards structure; it is decorated with the
regulation black meridian curves.  There is nothing missing,
nothing except the essential thing, the eggs, for which the
spinstress has gone to such expense in the matter of silks.  Where
are the eggs?  They are not in the bag, which I open and find
empty.  They are lying on the ground below, on the sand in the pan,
utterly unprotected.

Disturbed at the moment of discharging them, the mother has missed
the mouth of the little bag and dropped them on the floor.  Perhaps
even, in her excitement, she came down from above and, compelled by
the exigencies of the ovaries, laid her eggs on the first support
that offered.  No matter:  if her Spider brain contains the least
gleam of sense, she must be aware of the disaster and is therefore
bound at once to abandon the elaborate manufacture of a now
superfluous nest.

Not at all:  the bag is woven around nothing, as accurate in shape,
as finished in structure as under normal conditions.  The absurd
perseverance displayed by certain Bees, whose egg and provisions I
used to remove, {20} is here repeated without the slightest
interference from me.  My victims used scrupulously to seal up
their empty cells.  In the same way, the Epeira puts the eiderdown
quilting and the taffeta wrapper round a capsule that contains
nothing.

Another, distracted from her work by some startling vibration,
leaves her nest at the moment when the layer of red-brown wadding
is being completed.  She flees to the dome, at a few inches above
her unfinished work, and spends upon a shapeless mattress, of no
use whatever, all the silk with which she would have woven the
outer wrapper if nothing had come to disturb her.

Poor fool!  You upholster the wires of your cage with swan's-down
and you leave the eggs imperfectly protected.  The absence of the
work already executed and the hardness of the metal do not warn you
that you are now engaged upon a senseless task.  You remind me of
the Pelopaeus, {21} who used to coat with mud the place on the wall
whence her nest had been removed.  You speak to me, in your own
fashion, of a strange psychology which is able to reconcile the
wonders of a master craftsmanship with aberrations due to
unfathomable stupidity.

Let us compare the work of the Banded Epeira with that of the
Penduline Titmouse, the cleverest of our small birds in the art of
nest-building.  This Tit haunts the osier-beds of the lower reaches
of the Rhone.  Rocking gently in the river breeze, his nest sways
pendent over the peaceful backwaters, at some distance from the
too-impetuous current.  It hangs from the drooping end of the
branch of a poplar, an old willow or an alder, all of them tall
trees, favouring the banks of streams.

It consists of a cotton bag, closed all round, save for a small
opening at the side, just sufficient to allow of the mother's
passage.  In shape, it resembles the body of an alembic, a
chemist's retort with a short lateral neck, or, better still, the
foot of a stocking, with the edges brought together, but for a
little round hole left at one side.  The outward appearances
increase the likeness:  one can almost see the traces of a
knitting-needle working with coarse stitches.  That is why, struck
by this shape, the Provencal peasant, in his expressive language,
calls the Penduline lou Debassaire, the Stocking-knitter.

The early-ripening seedlets of the widows and poplars furnish the
materials for the work.  There breaks from them, in May, a sort of
vernal snow, a fine down, which the eddies of the air heap in the
crevices of the ground.  It is a cotton similar to that of our
manufactures, but of very short staple.  It comes from an
inexhaustible warehouse:  the tree is bountiful; and the wind from
the osier-beds gathers the tiny flocks as they pour from the seeds.
They are easy to pick up.

The difficulty is to set to work.  How does the bird proceed, in
order to knit its stocking?  How, with such simple implements as
its beak and claws, does it manage to produce a fabric which our
skilled fingers would fail to achieve?  An examination of the nest
will inform us, to a certain extent.

The cotton of the poplar cannot, of itself, supply a hanging pocket
capable of supporting the weight of the brood and resisting the
buffeting of the wind.  Rammed, entangled and packed together, the
flocks, similar to those which ordinary wadding would give if
chopped up very fine, would produce only an agglomeration devoid of
cohesion and liable to be dispelled by the first breath of air.
They require a canvas, a warp, to keep them in position.

Tiny dead stalks, with fibrous barks, well softened by the action
of moisture and the air, furnish the Penduline with a coarse tow,
not unlike that of hemp.  With these ligaments, purged of every
woody particle and tested for flexibility and tenacity, he winds a
number of loops round the end of the branch which he has selected
as a support for his structure.

It is not a very accurate piece of work.  The loops run clumsily
and anyhow:  some are slacker, others tighter; but, when all is
said, it is solid, which is the main point.  Also, this fibrous
sheath, the keystone of the edifice, occupies a fair length of
branch, which enables the fastenings for the net to be multiplied.

The several straps, after describing a certain number of turns,
ravel out at the ends and hang loose.  After them come interlaced
threads, greater in number and finer in texture.  In the tangled
jumble occur what might almost be described as weaver's knots.  As
far as one can judge by the result alone, without having seen the
bird at work, this is how the canvas, the support of the cotton
wall, is obtained.

This warp, this inner framework, is obviously not constructed in
its entirety from the start; it goes on gradually, as the bird
stuffs the part above it with cotton.  The wadding, picked up bit
by bit from the ground, is teazled by the bird's claws and
inserted, all fleecy, into the meshes of the canvas.  The beak
pushes it, the breast presses it, both inside and out.  The result
is a soft felt a couple of inches thick.

Near the top of the pouch, on one side, is contrived a narrow
orifice, tapering into a short neck.  This is the kitchen-door.  In
order to pass through it, the Penduline, small though he be, has to
force the elastic partition, which yields slightly and then
contracts.  Lastly, the house is furnished with a mattress of
first-quality cotton.  Here lie from six to eight white eggs, the
size of a cherry-stone.

Well, this wonderful nest is a barbarous casemate compared with
that of the Banded Epeira.  As regards shape, this stocking-foot
cannot be mentioned in the same breath with the Spider's elegant
and faultlessly-rounded balloon.  The fabric of mixed cotton and
tow is a rustic frieze beside the spinstress' satin; the
suspension-straps are clumsy cables compared with her delicate silk
fastenings.  Where shall we find in the Penduline's mattress aught
to vie with the Epeira's eiderdown, that teazled russet gossamer?
The Spider is superior to the bird in every way, in so far as
concerns her work.

But, on her side, the Penduline is a more devoted mother.  For
weeks on end, squatting at the bottom of her purse, she presses to
her heart the eggs, those little white pebbles from which the
warmth of her body will bring forth life.  The Epeira knows not
these softer passions.  Without bestowing a second glance an it,
she abandons her nest to its fate, be it good or ill.



CHAPTER III:  THE NARBONNE LYCOSA



The Epeira, who displays such astonishing industry to give her eggs
a dwelling-house of incomparable perfection, becomes, after that,
careless of her family.  For what reason?  She lacks the time.  She
has to die when the first cold comes, whereas the eggs are destined
to pass the winter in their downy snuggery.  The desertion of the
nest is inevitable, owing to the very force of things.  But, if the
hatching were earlier and took place in the Epeira's lifetime, I
imagine that she would rival the bird in devotion.

So I gather from the, analogy of Thomisus onustus, WALCK., a
shapely Spider who weaves no web, lies in wait for her prey and
walks sideways, after the manner of the Crab.  I have spoken
elsewhere {22} of her encounters with the Domestic Bee, whom she
jugulates by biting her in the neck.

Skilful in the prompt despatch of her prey, the little Crab Spider
is no less well-versed in the nesting art.  I find her settled on a
privet in the enclosure.  Here, in the heart of a cluster of
flowers, the luxurious creature plaits a little pocket of white
satin, shaped like a wee thimble.  It is the receptacle for the
eggs.  A round, flat lid, of a felted fabric, closes the mouth.

Above this ceiling rises a dome of stretched threads and faded
flowerets which have fallen from the cluster.  This is the
watcher's belvedere, her conning-tower.  An opening, which is
always free, gives access to this post.

Here the Spider remains on constant duty.  She has thinned greatly
since she laid her eggs, has almost lost her corporation.  At the
least alarm, she sallies forth, waves a threatening limb at the
passing stranger and invites him, with a gesture, to keep his
distance.  Having put the intruder to flight, she quickly returns
indoors.

And what does she do in there, under her arch of withered flowers
and silk?  Night and day, she shields the precious eggs with her
poor body spread out flat.  Eating is neglected.  No more lying in
wait, no more Bees drained to the last drop of blood.  Motionless,
rapt in meditation, the Spider is in an incubating posture, in
other words, she is sitting on her eggs.  Strictly speaking, the
word 'incubating' means that and nothing else.

The brooding Hen is no more assiduous, but she is also a heating-
apparatus and, with the gentle warmth of her body, awakens the
germs to life.  For the Spider, the heat of the sun suffices; and
this alone keeps me from saying that she 'broods.'

For two or three weeks, more and more wrinkled by abstinence, the
little Spider never relaxes her position.  Then comes the hatching.
The youngsters stretch a few threads in swing-like curves from twig
to twig.  The tiny rope-dancers practise for some days in the sun;
then they disperse, each intent upon his own affairs.

Let us now look at the watch-tower of the nest.  The mother is
still there, but this time lifeless.  The devoted creature has
known the delight of seeing her family born; she has assisted the
weaklings through the trap-door; and, when her duty was done, very
gently she died.  The Hen does not reach this height of self-
abnegation.

Other Spiders do better still, as, for instance, the Narbonne
Lycosa, or Black-bellied Tarantula (Lycosa narbonnensis, WALCK.),
whose prowess has been described in an earlier chapter.  The reader
will remember her burrow, her pit of a bottle-neck's width, dug in
the pebbly soil beloved by the lavender and the thyme.  The mouth
is rimmed by a bastion of gravel and bits of wood cemented with
silk.  There is nothing else around her dwelling:  no web, no
snares of any kind.

From her inch-high turret, the Lycosa lies in wait for the passing
Locust.  She gives a bound, pursues the prey and suddenly deprives
it of motion with a bite in the neck.  The game is consumed on the
spot, or else in the lair; the insect's tough hide arouses no
disgust.  The sturdy huntress is not a drinker of blood, like the
Epeira; she needs solid food, food that crackles between the jaws.
She is like a Dog devouring his bone.

Would you care to bring her to the light of day from the depths of
her well?  Insert a thin straw into the burrow and move it about.
Uneasy as to what is happening above, the recluse hastens to climb
up and stops, in a threatening attitude, at some distance from the
orifice.  You see her eight eyes gleaming like diamonds in the
dark; you see her powerful poison-fangs yawning, ready to bite.  He
who is not accustomed to the sight of this horror, rising from
under the ground, cannot suppress a shiver.  B-r-r-r-r!  Let us
leave the beast alone.

Chance, a poor stand-by, sometimes contrives very well.  At the
beginning of the month of August, the children call me to the far
side of the enclosure, rejoicing in a find which they have made
under the rosemary-bushes.  It is a magnificent Lycosa, with an
enormous belly, the sign of an impending delivery.

The obese Spider is gravely devouring something in the midst of a
circle of onlookers.  And what?  The remains of a Lycosa a little
smaller than herself, the remains of her male.  It is the end of
the tragedy that concludes the nuptials.  The sweetheart is eating
her lover.  I allow the matrimonial rites to be fulfilled in all
their horror; and, when the last morsel of the unhappy wretch has
been scrunched up, I incarcerate the terrible matron under a cage
standing in an earthen pan filled with sand.

Early one morning, ten days later, I find her preparing for her
confinement.  A silk network is first spun on the ground, covering
an extent about equal to the palm of one's hand.  It is coarse and
shapeless, but firmly fixed.  This is the floor on which the Spider
means to operate.

On this foundation, which acts as a protection from the sand, the
Lycosa fashions a round mat, the size of a two-franc piece and made
of superb white silk.  With a gentle, uniform movement, which might
be regulated by the wheels of a delicate piece of clockwork, the
tip of the abdomen rises and falls, each time touching the
supporting base a little farther away, until the extreme scope of
the mechanism is attained.

Then, without the Spider's moving her position, the oscillation is
resumed in the opposite direction.  By means of this alternate
motion, interspersed with numerous contacts, a segment of the sheet
is obtained, of a very accurate texture.  When this is done, the
Spider moves a little along a circular line and the loom works in
the same manner on another segment.

The silk disk, a sort of hardly concave paten, now no longer
receives aught from the spinnerets in its centre; the marginal belt
alone increases in thickness.  The piece thus becomes a bowl-shaped
porringer, surrounded by a wide, flat edge.

The time for the laying has come.  With one quick emission, the
viscous, pale-yellow eggs are laid in the basin, where they heap
together in the shape of a globe which projects largely outside the
cavity.  The spinnerets are once more set going.  With short
movements, as the tip of the abdomen rises and falls to weave the
round mat, they cover up the exposed hemisphere.  The result is a
pill set in the middle of a circular carpet.

The legs, hitherto idle, are now working.  They take up and break
off one by one the threads that keep the round mat stretched on the
coarse supporting network.  At the same time, the fangs grip this
sheet, lift it by degrees, tear it from its base and fold it over
upon the globe of eggs.  It is a laborious operation.  The whole
edifice totters, the floor collapses, fouled with sand.  By a
movement of the legs, those soiled shreds are cast aside.  Briefly,
by means of violent tugs of the fangs, which pull, and broom-like
efforts of the legs, which clear away, the Lycosa extricates the
bag of eggs and removes it as a clear-cut mass, free from any
adhesion.

It is a white-silk pill, soft to the touch and glutinous.  Its size
is that of an average cherry.  An observant eye will notice,
running horizontally around the middle, a fold which a needle is
able to raise without breaking it.  This hem, generally
undistinguishable from the rest of the surface, is none other than
the edge of the circular mat, drawn over the lower hemisphere.  The
other hemisphere, through which the youngsters will go out, is less
well fortified:  its only wrapper is the texture spun over the eggs
immediately after they were laid.

Inside, there is nothing but the eggs:  no mattress, no soft
eiderdown, like that of the Epeirae.  The Lycosa, indeed, has no
need to guard her eggs against the inclemencies of the winter, for
the hatching will take place long before the cold weather comes.
Similarly, the Thomisus, with her early brood, takes good care not
to incur useless expenditure:  she gives her eggs, for their
protection, a simple purse of satin.

The work of spinning, followed by that of tearing, is continued for
a whole morning, from five to nine o'clock.  Worn out with fatigue,
the mother embraces her dear pill and remains motionless.  I shall
see no more to-day.  Next morning, I find the Spider carrying the
bag of eggs slung from her stern.

Henceforth, until the hatching, she does not leave go of the
precious burden, which, fastened to the spinnerets by a short
ligament, drags and bumps along the ground.  With this load banging
against her heels, she goes about her business; she walks or rests,
she seeks her prey, attacks it and devours it.  Should some
accident cause the wallet to drop off, it is soon replaced.  The
spinnerets touch it somewhere, anywhere, and that is enough:
adhesion is at once restored.

The Lycosa is a stay-at-home.  She never goes out except to snap up
some game passing within her hunting-domains, near the burrow.  At
the end of August, however, it is not unusual to meet her roaming
about, dragging her wallet behind her.  Her hesitations make one
think that she is looking for her home, which she has left for the
moment and has a difficulty in finding.

Why these rambles?  There are two reasons:  first the pairing and
then the making of the pill.  There is a lack of space in the
burrow, which provides only room enough for the Spider engaged in
long contemplation.  Now the preparations for the egg-bag require
an extensive flooring, a supporting frame-work about the size of
one's hand, as my caged prisoner has shown us.  The Lycosa has not
so much space at her disposal, in her well; hence the necessity for
coming out and working at her wallet in the open air, doubtless in
the quiet hours of the night.

The meeting with the male seems likewise to demand an excursion.
Running the risk of being eaten alive, will he venture to plunge
into his lady's cave, into a lair whence flight would be
impossible?  It is very doubtful.  Prudence demands that matters
should take place outside.  Here at least there is some chance of
beating a hasty retreat which will enable the rash swain to escape
the attacks of his horrible bride.

The interview in the open air lessens the danger without removing
it entirely.  We had proof of this when we caught the Lycosa in the
act of devouring her lover aboveground, in a part of the enclosure
which had been broken for planting and which was therefore not
suitable for the Spider's establishment.  The burrow must have been
some way off; and the meeting of the pair took place at the very
spot of the tragic catastrophe.  Although he had a clear road, the
male was not quick enough in getting away and was duly eaten.

After this cannibal orgy, does the Lycosa go back home?  Perhaps
not, for a while.  Besides, she would have to go out a second time,
to manufacture her pill on a level space of sufficient extent.

When the work is done, some of them emancipate themselves, think
they will have a look at the country before retiring for good and
all.  It is these whom we sometimes meet wandering aimlessly and
dragging their bag behind them.  Sooner or later, however, the
vagrants return home; and the month of August is not over before a
straw rustled in any burrow will bring the mother up, with her
wallet slung behind her.  I am able to procure as many as I want
and, with them, to indulge in certain experiments of the highest
interest.

It is a sight worth seeing, that of the Lycosa dragging her
treasure after her, never leaving it, day or night, sleeping or
waking, and defending it with a courage that strikes the beholder
with awe.  If I try to take the bag from her, she presses it to her
breast in despair, hangs on to my pincers, bites them with her
poison-fangs.  I can hear the daggers grating on the steel.  No,
she would not allow herself to be robbed of the wallet with
impunity, if my fingers were not supplied with an implement.

By dint of pulling and shaking the pill with the forceps, I take it
from the Lycosa, who protests furiously.  I fling her in exchange a
pill taken from another Lycosa.  It is at once seized in the fangs,
embraced by the legs and hung on to the spinneret.  Her own or
another's:  it is all one to the Spider, who walks away proudly
with the alien wallet.  This was to be expected, in view of the
similarity of the pills exchanged.

A test of another kind, with a second subject, renders the mistake
more striking.  I substitute, in the place of the lawful bag which
I have removed, the work of the Silky Epeira.  The colour and
softness of the material are the same in both cases; but the shape
is quite different.  The stolen object is a globe; the object
presented in exchange is an elliptical conoid studded with angular
projections along the edge of the base.  The Spider takes no
account of this dissimilarity.  She promptly glues the queer bag to
her spinnerets and is as pleased as though she were in possession
of her real pill.  My experimental villainies have no other
consequences beyond an ephemeral carting.  When hatching-time
arrives, early in the case of the Lycosa, late in that of the
Epeira, the gulled Spider abandons the strange bag and pays it no
further attention.

Let us penetrate yet deeper into the wallet-bearer's stupidity.
After depriving the Lycosa of her eggs, I throw her a ball of cork,
roughly polished with a file and of the same size as the stolen
pill.  She accepts the corky substance, so different from the silk
purse, without the least demur.  One would have thought that she
would recognize her mistake with those eight eyes of hers, which
gleam like precious stones.  The silly creature pays no attention.
Lovingly she embraces the cork ball, fondles it with her palpi,
fastens it to her spinnerets and thenceforth drags it after her as
though she were dragging her own bag.

Let us give another the choice between the imitation and the real.
The rightful pill and the cork ball are placed together on the
floor of the jar.  Will the Spider be able to know the one that
belongs to her?  The fool is incapable of doing so.  She makes a
wild rush and seizes haphazard at one time her property, at another
my sham product.  Whatever is first touched becomes a good capture
and is forthwith hung up.

If I increase the number of cork balls, if I put in four or five of
them, with the real pill among them, it is seldom that the Lycosa
recovers her own property.  Attempts at enquiry, attempts at
selection there are none.  Whatever she snaps up at random she
sticks to, be it good or bad.  As there are more of the sham pills
of cork, these are the most often seized by the Spider.

This obtuseness baffles me.  Can the animal be deceived by the soft
contact of the cork?  I replace the cork balls by pellets of cotton
or paper, kept in their round shape with a few bands of thread.
Both are very readily accepted instead of the real bag that has
been removed.

Can the illusion be due to the colouring, which is light in the
cork and not unlike the tint of the silk globe when soiled with a
little earth, while it is white in the paper and the cotton, when
it is identical with that of the original pill?  I give the Lycosa,
in exchange for her work, a pellet of silk thread, chosen of a fine
red, the brightest of all colours.  The uncommon pill is as readily
accepted and as jealously guarded as the others.

We will leave the wallet-bearer alone; we know all that we want to
know about her poverty of intellect.  Let us wait for the hatching,
which takes place in the first fortnight in September.  As they
come out of the pill, the youngsters, to the number of about a
couple of hundred, clamber on the Spider's back and there sit
motionless, jammed close together, forming a sort of bark of
mingled legs and paunches.  The mother is unrecognizable under this
live mantilla.  When the hatching is over, the wallet is loosened
from the spinnerets and cast aside as a worthless rag.

The little ones are very good:  none stirs none tries to get more
room for himself at his neighbours' expense.  What are they doing
there, so quietly?  They allow themselves to be carted about, like
the young of the Opossum.  Whether she sit in long meditation at
the bottom of her den, or come to the orifice, in mild weather, to
bask in the sun, the Lycosa never throws off her great-coat of
swarming youngsters until the fine season comes.

If, in the middle of winter, in January or February, I happen, out
in the fields, to ransack the Spider's dwelling, after the rain,
snow and frost have battered it and, as a rule, dismantled the
bastion at the entrance, I always find her at home, still full of
vigour, still carrying her family.  This vehicular upbringing lasts
five or six months at least, without interruption.  The celebrated
American carrier, the Opossum, who emancipates her offspring after
a few weeks' carting, cuts a poor figure beside the Lycosa.

What do the little ones eat, on the maternal spine?  Nothing, so
far as I know.  I do not see them grow larger.  I find them, at the
tardy period of their emancipation, just as they were when they
left the bag.

During the bad season, the mother herself is extremely abstemious.
At long intervals, she accepts, in my jars, a belated Locust, whom
I have captured, for her benefit, in the sunnier nooks.  In order
to keep herself in condition, as when she is dug up in the course
of my winter excavations, she must therefore sometimes break her
fast and come out in search of prey, without, of course, discarding
her live mantilla.

The expedition has its dangers.  The youngsters may be brushed off
by a blade of grass.  What becomes of them when they have a fall?
Does the mother give them a thought?  Does she come to their
assistance and help them to regain their place on her back?  Not at
all.  The affection of a Spider's heart, divided among some
hundreds, can spare but a very feeble portion to each.  The Lycosa
hardly troubles, whether one youngster fall from his place, or six,
or all of them.  She waits impassively for the victims of the
mishap to get out of their own difficulty, which they do, for that
matter, and very nimbly.

I sweep the whole family from the back of one of my boarders with a
hair-pencil.  Not a sign of emotion, not an attempt at search on
the part of the denuded one.  After trotting about a little on the
sand, the dislodged youngsters find, these here, those there, one
or other of the mother's legs, spread wide in a circle.  By means
of these climbing-poles, they swarm to the top and soon the dorsal
group resumes its original form.  Not one of the lot is missing.
The Lycosa's sons know their trade as acrobats to perfection:  the
mother need not trouble her head about their fall.

With a sweep of the pencil, I make the family of one Spider fall
around another laden with her own family.  The dislodged ones
nimbly scramble up the legs and climb on the back of their new
mother, who kindly allows them to behave as though they belonged to
her.  There is no room on the abdomen, the regulation resting-
place, which is already occupied by the real sons.  The invaders
thereupon encamp on the front part, beset the thorax and change the
carrier into a horrible pin-cushion that no longer bears the least
resemblance to a Spider form.  Meanwhile, the sufferer raises no
sort of protest against this access of family.  She placidly
accepts them all and walks them all about.

The youngsters, on their side, are unable to distinguish between
what is permitted and forbidden.  Remarkable acrobats that they
are, they climb on the first Spider that comes along, even when of
a different species, provided that she be of a fair size.  I place
them in the presence of a big Epeira marked with a white cross on a
pale-orange ground (Epeira pallida, OLIV.).  The little ones, as
soon as they are dislodged from the back of the Lycosa their
mother, clamber up the stranger without hesitation.

Intolerant of these familiarities, the Spider shakes the leg
encroached upon and flings the intruders to a distance.  The
assault is doggedly resumed, to such good purpose that a dozen
succeed in hoisting themselves to the top.  The Epeira, who is not
accustomed to the tickling of such a load, turns over on her back
and rolls on the ground in the manner of a donkey when his hide is
itching.  Some are lamed, some are even crushed.  This does not
deter the others, who repeat the escalade as soon as the Epeira is
on her legs again.  Then come more somersaults, more rollings on
the back, until the giddy swarm are all discomfited and leave the
Spider in peace.



Chapter IV:  THE NARBONNE LYCOSA:  THE BURROW



Michelet {23} has told us how, as a printer's apprentice in a
cellar, he established amicable relations with a Spider.  At a
certain hour of the day, a ray of sunlight would glint through the
window of the gloomy workshop and light up the little compositor's
case.  Then his eight-legged neighbour would come down from her web
and take her share of the sunshine on the edge of the case.  The
boy did not interfere with her; he welcomed the trusting visitor as
a friend and as a pleasant diversion from the long monotony.  When
we lack the society of our fellow-men, we take refuge in that of
animals, without always losing by the change.

I do not, thank God, suffer from the melancholy of a cellar:  my
solitude is gay with light and verdure; I attend, whenever I
please, the fields' high festival, the Thrushes' concert, the
Crickets' symphony; and yet my friendly commerce with the Spider is
marked by an even greater devotion than the young typesetter's.  I
admit her to the intimacy of my study, I make room for her among my
books, I set her in the sun on my window-ledge, I visit her
assiduously at her home, in the country.  The object of our
relations is not to create a means of escape from the petty worries
of life, pin-pricks whereof I have my share like other men, a very
large share, indeed; I propose to submit to the Spider a host of
questions whereto, at times, she condescends to reply.

To what fair problems does not the habit of frequenting her give
rise!  To set them forth worthily, the marvellous art which the
little printer was to acquire were not too much.  One needs the pen
of a Michelet; and I have but a rough, blunt pencil.  Let us try,
nevertheless:  even when poorly clad, truth is still beautiful.

I will therefore once more take up the story of the Spider's
instinct, a story of which the preceding chapters have given but a
very rough idea.  Since I wrote those earlier essays, my field of
observation has been greatly extended.  My notes have been enriched
by new and most remarkable facts.  It is right that I should employ
them for the purpose of a more detailed biography.

The exigencies of order and clearness expose me, it is true, to
occasional repetitions.  This is inevitable when one has to marshal
in an harmonious whole a thousand items culled from day to day,
often unexpectedly, and bearing no relation one to the other.  The
observer is not master of his time; opportunity leads him and by
unsuspected ways.  A certain question suggested by an earlier fact
finds no reply until many years after.  Its scope, moreover, is
amplified and completed with views collected on the road.  In a
work, therefore, of this fragmentary character, repetitions,
necessary for the due co-ordination of ideas, are inevitable.  I
shall be as sparing of them as I can.

Let us once more introduce our old friends the Epeira and the
Lycosa, who are the most important Spiders in my district.  The
Narbonne Lycosa, or Black-bellied Tarantula, chooses her domicile
in the waste, pebbly lands beloved of the thyme.  Her dwelling, a
fortress rather than a villa, is a burrow about nine inches deep
and as wide as the neck of a claret-bottle.  The direction is
perpendicular, in so far as obstacles, frequent in a soil of this
kind, permit.  A bit of gravel can be extracted and hoisted
outside; but a flint is an immovable boulder which the Spider
avoids by giving a bend to her gallery.  If more such are met with,
the residence becomes a winding cave, with stone vaults, with
lobbies communicating by means of sharp passages.

This lack of plan has no attendant drawbacks, so well does the
owner, from long habit, know every corner and storey of her
mansion.  If any interesting buzz occur overhead, the Lycosa climbs
up from her rugged manor with the same speed as from a vertical
shaft.  Perhaps she even finds the windings and turnings an
advantage, when she has to drag into her den a prey that happens to
defend itself.

As a rule, the end of the burrow widens into a side-chamber, a
lounge or resting-place where the Spider meditates at length and is
content to lead a life of quiet when her belly is full.

A silk coating, but a scanty one, for the Lycosa has not the wealth
of silk possessed by the Weaving Spiders, lines the walls of the
tube and keeps the loose earth from falling.  This plaster, which
cements the incohesive and smooths the rugged parts, is reserved
more particularly for the top of the gallery, near the mouth.
Here, in the day-time, if things be peaceful all around, the Lycosa
stations herself, either to enjoy the warmth of the sun, her great
delight, or to lie in wait for game.  The threads of the silk
lining afford a firm hold to the claws on every side, whether the
object be to sit motionless for hours, revelling in the light and
heat, or to pounce upon the passing prey.

Around the orifice of the burrow rises, to a greater or lesser
height, a circular parapet, formed of tiny pebbles, twigs and
straps borrowed from the dry leaves of the neighbouring grasses,
all more or less dexterously tied together and cemented with silk.
This work of rustic architecture is never missing, even though it
be no more than a mere pad.

When she reaches maturity and is once settled, the Lycosa becomes
eminently domesticated.  I have been living in close communion with
her for the last three years.  I have installed her in large
earthen pans on the window-sills of my study and I have her daily
under my eyes.  Well, it is very rarely that I happen on her
outside, a few inches from her hole, back to which she bolts at the
least alarm.

We may take it, then, that, when not in captivity, the Lycosa does
not go far afield to gather the wherewithal to build her parapet
and that she makes shift with what she finds upon her threshold.
In these conditions, the building-stones are soon exhausted and the
masonry ceases for lack of materials.

The wish came over me to see what dimensions the circular edifice
would assume, if the Spider were given an unlimited supply.  With
captives to whom I myself act as purveyor the thing is easy enough.
Were it only with a view to helping whoso may one day care to
continue these relations with the big Spider of the waste-lands,
let me describe how my subjects are housed.

A good-sized earthenware pan, some nine inches deep, is filled with
a red, clayey earth, rich in pebbles, similar, in short, to that of
the places haunted by the Lycosa.  Properly moistened into a paste,
the artificial soil is heaped, layer by layer, around a central
reed, of a bore equal to that of the animal's natural burrow.  When
the receptacle is filled to the top, I withdraw the reed, which
leaves a yawning, perpendicular shaft.  I thus obtain the abode
which shall replace that of the fields.

To find the hermit to inhabit it is merely the matter of a walk in
the neighbourhood.  When removed from her own dwelling, which is
turned topsy-turvy by my trowel, and placed in possession of the
den produced by my art, the Lycosa at once disappears into that
den.  She does not come out again, seeks nothing better elsewhere.
A large wire-gauze cover rests on the soil in the pan and prevents
escape.

In any case, the watch, in this respect, makes no demands upon my
diligence.  The prisoner is satisfied with her new abode and
manifests no regret for her natural burrow.  There is no attempt at
flight on her part.  Let me not omit to add that each pan must
receive not more than one inhabitant.  The Lycosa is very
intolerant.  To her, a neighbour is fair game, to be eaten without
scruple when one has might on one's side.  Time was when, unaware
of this fierce intolerance, which is more savage still at breeding-
time, I saw hideous orgies perpetrated in my overstocked cages.  I
shall have occasion to describe those tragedies later.

Let us meanwhile consider the isolated Lycosae.  They do not touch
up the dwelling which I have moulded for them with a bit of reed;
at most, now and again, perhaps with the object of forming a lounge
or bedroom at the bottom, they fling out a few loads of rubbish.
But all, little by little, build the kerb that is to edge the
mouth.

I have given them plenty of first-rate materials, far superior to
those which they use when left to their own resources.  These
consist, first, for the foundations, of little smooth stones, some
of which are as large as an almond.  With this road-metal are
mingled short strips of raphia, or palm-fibre, flexible ribbons,
easily bent.  These stand for the Spider's usual basket-work,
consisting of slender stalks and dry blades of grass.  Lastly, by
way of an unprecedented treasure, never yet employed by a Lycosa, I
place at my captives' disposal some thick threads of wool, cut into
inch lengths.

As I wish, at the same time, to find out whether my animals, with
the magnificent lenses of their eyes, are able to distinguish
colours and prefer one colour to another, I mix up bits of wool of
different hues:  there are red, green, white and yellow pieces.  If
the Spider have any preference, she can choose where she pleases.

The Lycosa always works at night, a regrettable circumstance, which
does not allow me to follow the worker's methods.  I see the
result; and that is all.  Were I to visit the building-yard by the
light of a lantern, I should be no wiser.  The animal, which is
very shy, would at once dive into her lair; and I should have lost
my sleep for nothing.  Furthermore, she is not a very diligent
labourer; she likes to take her time.  Two or three bits of wool or
raphia placed in position represent a whole night's work.  And to
this slowness we must add long spells of utter idleness.

Two months pass; and the result of my liberality surpasses my
expectations.  Possessing more windfalls than they know what to do
with, all picked up in their immediate neighbourhood, my Lycosae
have built themselves donjon-keeps the like of which their race has
not yet known.  Around the orifice, on a slightly sloping bank,
small, flat, smooth stones have been laid to form a broken, flagged
pavement.  The larger stones, which are Cyclopean blocks compared
with the size of the animal that has shifted them, are employed as
abundantly as the others.

On this rockwork stands the donjon.  It is an interlacing of raphia
and bits of wool, picked up at random, without distinction of
shade.  Red and white, green and yellow are mixed without any
attempt at order.  The Lycosa is indifferent to the joys of colour.

The ultimate result is a sort of muff, a couple of inches high.
Bands of silk, supplied by the spinnerets, unite the pieces, so
that the whole resembles a coarse fabric.  Without being absolutely
faultless, for there are always awkward pieces on the outside,
which the worker could not handle, the gaudy building is not devoid
of merit.  The bird lining its nest would do no better.  Whoso sees
the curious, many-coloured productions in my pans takes them for an
outcome of my industry, contrived with a view to some experimental
mischief; and his surprise is great when I confess who the real
author is.  No one would ever believe the Spider capable of
constructing such a monument.

It goes without saying that, in a state of liberty, on our barren
waste-lands, the Lycosa does not indulge in such sumptuous
architecture.  I have given the reason:  she is too great a stay-
at-home to go in search of materials and she makes use of the
limited resources which she finds around her.  Bits of earth, small
chips of stone, a few twigs, a few withered grasses:  that is all,
or nearly all.  Wherefore the work is generally quite modest and
reduced to a parapet that hardly attracts attention.

My captives teach us that, when materials are plentiful, especially
textile materials that remove all fears of landslip, the Lycosa
delights in tall turrets.  She understands the art of donjon-
building and puts it into practice as often as she possesses the
means.

This art is akin to another, from which it is apparently derived.
If the sun be fierce or if rain threaten, the Lycosa closes the
entrance to her dwelling with a silken trellis-work, wherein she
embeds different matters, often the remnants of victims which she
has devoured.  The ancient Gael nailed the heads of his vanquished
enemies to the door of his hut.  In the same way, the fierce Spider
sticks the skulls of her prey into the lid of her cave.  These
lumps look very well on the ogre's roof; but we must be careful not
to mistake them for warlike trophies.  The animal knows nothing of
our barbarous bravado.  Everything at the threshold of the burrow
is used indiscriminately:  fragments of Locust, vegetable remains
and especially particles of earth.  A Dragon-fly's head baked by
the sun is as good as a bit of gravel and no better.

And so, with silk and all sorts of tiny materials, the Lycosa
builds a lidded cap to the entrance of her home.  I am not well
acquainted with the reasons that prompt her to barricade herself
indoors, particularly as the seclusion is only temporary and varies
greatly in duration.  I obtain precise details from a tribe of
Lycosae wherewith the enclosure, as will be seen later, happens to
be thronged in consequence of my investigations into the dispersal
of the family.

At the time of the tropical August heat, I see my Lycosae, now this
batch, now that, building, at the entrance to the burrow, a convex
ceiling, which is difficult to distinguish from the surrounding
soil.  Can it be to protect themselves from the too-vivid light?
This is doubtful; for, a few days later, though the power of the
sun remain the same, the roof is broken open and the Spider
reappears at her door, where she revels in the torrid heat of the
dog-days.

Later, when October comes, if it be rainy weather, she retires once
more under a roof, as though she were guarding herself against the
damp.  Let us not be too positive of anything, however:  often,
when it is raining hard, the Spider bursts her ceiling and leaves
her house open to the skies.

Perhaps the lid is only put on for serious domestic events, notably
for the laying.  I do, in fact, perceive young Lycosae who shut
themselves in before they have attained the dignity of motherhood
and who reappear, some time later, with the bag containing the eggs
hung to their stern.  The inference that they close the door with
the object of securing greater quiet while spinning the maternal
cocoon would not be in keeping with the unconcern displayed by the
majority.  I find some who lay their eggs in an open burrow; I come
upon some who weave their cocoon and cram it with eggs in the open
air, before they even own a residence.  In short, I do not succeed
in fathoming the reasons that cause the burrow to be closed, no
matter what the weather, hot or cold, wet or dry.

The fact remains that the lid is broken and repaired repeatedly,
sometimes on the same day.  In spite of the earthy casing, the silk
woof gives it the requisite pliancy to cleave when pushed by the
anchorite and to rip open without falling into ruins.  Swept back
to the circumference of the mouth and increased by the wreckage of
further ceilings, it becomes a parapet, which the Lycosa raises by
degrees in her long moments of leisure.  The bastion which
surmounts the burrow, therefore, takes its origin from the
temporary lid.  The turret derives from the split ceiling.

What is the purpose of this turret?  My pans will tell us that.  An
enthusiastic votary of the chase, so long as she is not permanently
fixed, the Lycosa, once she has set up house, prefers to lie in
ambush and wait for the quarry.  Every day, when the heat is
greatest, I see my captives come up slowly from under ground and
lean upon the battlements of their woolly castle-keep.  They are
then really magnificent in their stately gravity.  With their
swelling belly contained within the aperture, their head outside,
their glassy eyes staring, their legs gathered for a spring, for
hours and hours they wait, motionless, bathing voluptuously in the
sun.

Should a tit-bit to her liking happen to pass, forthwith the
watcher darts from her tall tower, swift as an arrow from the bow.
With a dagger-thrust in the neck, she stabs the jugular of the
Locust, Dragon-fly or other prey whereof I am the purveyor; and she
as quickly scales the donjon and retires with her capture.  The
performance is a wonderful exhibition of skill and speed.

Very seldom is a quarry missed, provided that it pass at a
convenient distance, within the range of the huntress' bound.  But,
if the prey be at some distance, for instance on the wire of the
cage, the Lycosa takes no notice of it.  Scorning to go in pursuit,
she allows it to roam at will.  She never strikes except when sure
of her stroke.  She achieves this by means of her tower.  Hiding
behind the wall, she sees the stranger advancing, keeps her eyes on
him and suddenly pounces when he comes within reach.  These abrupt
tactics make the thing a certainty.  Though he were winged and
swift of flight, the unwary one who approaches the ambush is lost.

This presumes, it is true, an exemplary patience on the Lycosa's
part; for the burrow has naught that can serve to entice victims.
At best, the ledge provided by the turret may, at rare intervals,
tempt some weary wayfarer to use it as a resting-place.  But, if
the quarry do not come to-day, it is sure to come to-morrow, the
next day, or later, for the Locusts hop innumerable in the waste-
land, nor are they always able to regulate their leaps.  Some day
or other, chance is bound to bring one of them within the purlieus
of the burrow.  This is the moment to spring upon the pilgrim from
the ramparts.  Until then, we maintain a stoical vigilance.  We
shall dine when we can; but we shall end by dining.

The Lycosa, therefore, well aware of these lingering eventualities,
waits and is not unduly distressed by a prolonged abstinence.  She
has an accommodating stomach, which is satisfied to be gorged to-
day and to remain empty afterwards for goodness knows how long.  I
have sometimes neglected my catering-duties for weeks at a time;
and my boarders have been none the worse for it.  After a more or
less protracted fast, they do not pine away, but are smitten with a
wolf-like hunger.  All these ravenous eaters are alike:  they
guzzle to excess to-day, in anticipation of to-morrow's dearth.

In her youth, before she has a burrow, the Lycosa earns her living
in another manner.  Clad in grey like her elders, but without the
black-velvet apron which she receives on attaining the marriageable
age, she roams among the scrubby grass.  This is true hunting.
Should a suitable quarry heave in sight, the Spider pursues it,
drives it from its shelters, follows it hot-foot.  The fugitive
gains the heights, makes as though to fly away.  He has not the
time.  With an upward leap, the Lycosa grabs him before he can
rise.

I am charmed with the agility wherewith my yearling boarders seize
the Flies which I provide for them.  In vain does the Fly take
refuge a couple of inches up, on some blade of grass.  With a
sudden spring into the air, the Spider pounces on the prey.  No Cat
is quicker in catching her Mouse.

But these are the feats of youth not handicapped by obesity.
Later, when a heavy paunch, dilated with eggs and silk, has to be
trailed along, those gymnastic performances become impracticable.
The Lycosa then digs herself a settled abode, a hunting-box, and
sits in her watch-tower, on the look-out for game.

When and how is the burrow obtained wherein the Lycosa, once a
vagrant, now a stay-at-home, is to spend the remainder of her long
life?  We are in autumn, the weather is already turning cool.  This
is how the Field Cricket sets to work:  as long as the days are
fine and the nights not too cold, the future chorister of spring
rambles over the fallows, careless of a local habitation.  At
critical moments, the cover of a dead leaf provides him with a
temporary shelter.  In the end, the burrow, the permanent dwelling,
is dug as the inclement season draws nigh.

The Lycosa shares the Cricket's views:  like him, she finds a
thousand pleasures in the vagabond life.  With September comes the
nuptial badge, the black-velvet bib.  The Spiders meet at night, by
the soft moonlight:  they romp together, they eat the beloved
shortly after the wedding; by day, they scour the country, they
track the game on the short-pile, grassy carpet, they take their
fill of the joys of the sun.  That is much better than solitary
meditation at the bottom of a well.  And so it is not rare to see
young mothers dragging their bag of eggs, or even already carrying
their family, and as yet without a home.

In October, it is time to settle down.  We then, in fact, find two
sorts of burrows, which differ in diameter.  The larger, bottle-
neck burrows belong to the old matrons, who have owned their house
for two years at least.  The smaller, of the width of a thick lead-
pencil, contain the young mothers, born that year.  By dint of long
and leisurely alterations, the novice's earths will increase in
depth as well as in diameter and become roomy abodes, similar to
those of the grandmothers.  In both, we find the owner and her
family, the latter sometimes already hatched and sometimes still
enclosed in the satin wallet.

Seeing no digging-tools, such as the excavation of the dwelling
seemed to me to require, I wondered whether the Lycosa might not
avail herself of some chance gallery, the work of the Cicada or the
Earth-worm.  This ready-made tunnel, thought I, must shorten the
labours of the Spider, who appears to be so badly off for tools;
she would only have to enlarge it and put it in order.  I was
wrong:  the burrow is excavated, from start to finish, by her
unaided labour.

Then where are the digging-implements?  We think of the legs, of
the claws.  We think of them, but reflection tells us that tools
such as these would not do:  they are too long and too difficult to
wield in a confined space.  What is required is the miner's short-
handled pick, wherewith to drive hard, to insert, to lever and to
extract; what is required is the sharp point that enters the earth
and crumbles it into fragments.  There remain the Lycosa's fangs,
delicate weapons which we at first hesitate to associate with such
work, so illogical does it seem to dig a pit with surgeon's
scalpels.

The fangs are a pair of sharp, curved points, which, when at rest,
crook like a finger and take shelter between two strong pillars.
The Cat sheathes her claws under the velvet of the paw, to preserve
their edge and sharpness.  In the same way, the Lycosa protects her
poisoned daggers by folding them within the case of two powerful
columns, which come plumb on the surface and contain the muscles
that work them.

Well, this surgical outfit, intended for stabbing the jugular
artery of the prey, suddenly becomes a pick-axe and does rough
navvy's work.  To witness the underground digging is impossible;
but we can, at least, with the exercise of a little patience, see
the rubbish carted away.  If I watch my captives, without tiring,
at a very early hour--for the work takes place mostly at night and
at long intervals--in the end I catch them coming up with a load.
Contrary to what I expected, the legs take no part in the carting.
It is the mouth that acts as the barrow.  A tiny ball of earth is
held between the fangs and is supported by the palpi, or feelers,
which are little arms employed in the service of the mouth-parts.
The Lycosa descends cautiously from her turret, goes to some
distance to get rid of her burden and quickly dives down again to
bring up more.

We have seen enough:  we know that the Lycosa's fangs, those lethal
weapons, are not afraid to bite into clay and gravel.  They knead
the excavated rubbish into pellets, take up the mass of earth and
carry it outside.  The rest follows naturally; it is the fangs that
dig, delve and extract.  How finely-tempered they must be, not to
be blunted by this well-sinker's work and to do duty presently in
the surgical operation of stabbing the neck!

I have said that the repairs and extensions of the burrow are made
at long intervals.  From time to time, the circular parapet
receives additions and becomes a little higher; less frequently
still, the dwelling is enlarged and deepened.  As a rule, the
mansion remains as it was for a whole season.  Towards the end of
winter, in March more than at any other period, the Lycosa seems to
wish to give herself a little more space.  This is the moment to
subject her to certain tests.

We know that the Field Cricket, when removed from his burrow and
caged under conditions that would allow him to dig himself a new
home should the fit seize him, prefers to tramp from one casual
shelter to another, or rather abandons every idea of creating a
permanent residence.  There is a short season whereat the instinct
for building a subterranean gallery is imperatively aroused.  When
this season is past, the excavating artist, if accidentally
deprived of his abode, becomes a wandering Bohemian, careless of a
lodging.  He has forgotten his talents and he sleeps out.

That the bird, the nest-builder, should neglect its art when it has
no brood to care for is perfectly logical:  it builds for its
family, not for itself.  But what shall we say of the Cricket, who
is exposed to a thousand mishaps when away from home?  The
protection of a roof would be of great use to him; and the giddy-
pate does not give it a thought, though he is very strong and more
capable than ever of digging with his powerful jaws.

What reason can we allege for this neglect?  None, unless it be
that the season of strenuous burrowing is past.  The instincts have
a calendar of their own.  At the given hour, suddenly they awaken;
as suddenly, afterwards, they fall asleep.  The ingenious become
incompetent when the prescribed period is ended.

On a subject of this kind, we can consult the Spider of the waste-
lands.  I catch an old Lycosa in the fields and house her, that
same day, under wire, in a burrow where I have prepared a soil to
her liking.  If, by my contrivances and with a bit of reed, I have
previously moulded a burrow roughly representing the one from which
I took her, the Spider enters it forthwith and seems pleased with
her new residence.  The product of my art is accepted as her lawful
property and undergoes hardly any alterations.  In course of time,
a bastion is erected around the orifice; the top of the gallery is
cemented with silk; and that is all.  In this establishment of my
building, the animal's behaviour remains what it would be under
natural conditions.

But place the Lycosa on the surface of the ground, without first
shaping a burrow.  What will the homeless Spider do?  Dig herself a
dwelling, one would think.  She has the strength to do so; she is
in the prime of life.  Besides, the soil is similar to that whence
I ousted her and suits the operation perfectly.  We therefore
expect to see the Spider settled before long in a shaft of her own
construction.

We are disappointed.  Weeks pass and not an effort is made, not
one.  Demoralized by the absence of an ambush, the Lycosa hardly
vouchsafes a glance at the game which I serve up.  The Crickets
pass within her reach in vain; most often she scorns them.  She
slowly wastes away with fasting and boredom.  At length, she dies.

Take up your miner's trade again, poor fool!  Make yourself a home,
since you know how to, and life will be sweet to you for many a
long day yet:  the weather is fine and victuals plentiful.  Dig,
delve, go underground, where safety lies.  Like an idiot, you
refrain; and you perish.  Why?

Because the craft which you were wont to ply is forgotten; because
the days of patient digging are past and your poor brain is unable
to work back.  To do a second time what has been done already is
beyond your wit.  For all your meditative air, you cannot solve the
problem of how to reconstruct that which is vanished and gone.

Let us now see what we can do with younger Lycosae, who are at the
burrowing-stage.  I dig out five or six at the end of February.
They are half the size of the old ones; their burrows are equal in
diameter to my little finger.  Rubbish quite fresh-spread around
the pit bears witness to the recent date of the excavations.

Relegated to their wire cages, these young Lycosae behave
differently according as the soil placed at their disposal is or is
not already provided with a burrow made by me.  A burrow is hardly
the word:  I give them but the nucleus of a shaft, about an inch
deep, to lure them on.  When in possession of this rudimentary
lair, the Spider does not hesitate to pursue the work which I have
interrupted in the fields.  At night, she digs with a will.  I can
see this by the heap of rubbish flung aside.  She at last obtains a
house to suit her, a house surmounted by the usual turret.

The others, on the contrary, those Spiders for whom the thrust of
my pencil has not contrived an entrance-hall representing, to a
certain extent, the natural gallery whence I dislodged them,
absolutely refuse to work; and they die, notwithstanding the
abundance of provisions.

The first pursue the season's task.  They were digging when I
caught them; and, carried away by the enthusiasm of their activity,
they go on digging inside my cages.  Taken in by my decoy-shaft,
they deepen the imprint of the pencil as though they were deepening
their real vestibule.  They do not begin their labours over again;
they continue them.

The second, not having this inducement, this semblance of a burrow
mistaken for their own work, forsake the idea of digging and allow
themselves to die, because they would have to travel back along the
chain of actions and to resume the pick-strokes of the start.  To
begin all over again requires reflection, a quality wherewith they
are not endowed.

To the insect--and we have seen this in many earlier cases--what is
done is done and cannot be taken up again.  The hands of a watch do
not move backwards.  The insect behaves in much the same way.  Its
activity urges it in one direction, ever forwards, without allowing
it to retrace its steps, even when an accident makes this
necessary.

What the Mason-bees and the others taught us erewhile the Lycosa
now confirms in her manner.  Incapable of taking fresh pains to
build herself a second dwelling, when the first is done for, she
will go on the tramp, she will break into a neighbour's house, she
will run the risk of being eaten should she not prove the stronger,
but she will never think of making herself a home by starting
afresh.

What a strange intellect is that of the animal, a mixture of
mechanical routine and subtle brain-power!  Does it contain gleams
that contrive, wishes that pursue a definite object?  Following in
the wake of so many others, the Lycosa warrants us in entertaining
a doubt.



CHAPTER V:  THE NARBONNE LYCOSA:  THE FAMILY



For three weeks and more, the Lycosa trails the bag of eggs hanging
to her spinnerets.  The reader will remember the experiments
described in the third chapter of this volume, particularly those
with the cork ball and the thread pellet which the Spider so
foolishly accepts in exchange for the real pill.  Well, this
exceedingly dull-witted mother, satisfied with aught that knocks
against her heels, is about to make us wonder at her devotion.

Whether she come up from her shaft to lean upon the kerb and bask
in the sun, whether she suddenly retire underground in the face of
danger, or whether she be roaming the country before settling down,
never does she let go her precious bag, that very cumbrous burden
in walking, climbing or leaping.  If, by some accident, it become
detached from the fastening to which it is hung, she flings herself
madly on her treasure and lovingly embraces it, ready to bite whoso
would take it from her.  I myself am sometimes the thief.  I then
hear the points of the poison-fangs grinding against the steel of
my pincers, which tug in one direction while the Lycosa tugs in the
other.  But let us leave the animal alone:  with a quick touch of
the spinnerets, the pill is restored to its place; and the Spider
strides off, still menacing.

Towards the end of summer, all the householders, old or young,
whether in captivity on the window-sill or at liberty in the paths
of the enclosure, supply me daily with the following improving
sight.  In the morning, as soon as the sun is hot and beats upon
their burrow, the anchorites come up from the bottom with their bag
and station themselves at the opening.  Long siestas on the
threshold in the sun are the order of the day throughout the fine
season; but, at the present time, the position adopted is a
different one.  Formerly, the Lycosa came out into the sun for her
own sake.  Leaning on the parapet, she had the front half of her
body outside the pit and the hinder half inside.

The eyes took their fill of light; the belly remained in the dark.
When carrying her egg-bag, the Spider reverses the posture:  the
front is in the pit, the rear outside.  With her hind-legs she
holds the white pill bulging with germs lifted above the entrance;
gently she turns and returns it, so as to present every side to the
life-giving rays.  And this goes on for half the day, so long as
the temperature is high; and it is repeated daily, with exquisite
patience, during three or four weeks.  To hatch its eggs, the bird
covers them with the quilt of its breast; it strains them to the
furnace of its heart.  The Lycosa turns hers in front of the hearth
of hearths, she gives them the sun as an incubator.

In the early days of September, the young ones, who have been some
time hatched, are ready to come out.  The pill rips open along the
middle fold.  We read of the origin of this fold in an earlier
chapter. {24}  Does the mother, feeling the brood quicken inside
the satin wrapper, herself break open the vessel at the opportune
moment?  It seems probable.  On the other hand, there may be a
spontaneous bursting, such as we shall see later in the Banded
Epeira's balloon, a tough wallet which opens a breach of its own
accord, long after the mother has ceased to exist.

The whole family emerges from the bag straightway.  Then and there,
the youngsters climb to the mother's back.  As for the empty bag,
now a worthless shred, it is flung out of the burrow; the Lycosa
does not give it a further thought.  Huddled together, sometimes in
two or three layers, according to their number, the little ones
cover the whole back of the mother, who, for seven or eight months
to come, will carry her family night and day.  Nowhere can we hope
to see a more edifying domestic picture than that of the Lycosa
clothed in her young.

From time to time, I meet a little band of gipsies passing along
the high-road on their way to some neighbouring fair.  The new-born
babe mewls on the mother's breast, in a hammock formed out of a
kerchief.  The last-weaned is carried pick-a-back; a third toddles
clinging to its mother's skirts; others follow closely, the biggest
in the rear, ferreting in the blackberry-laden hedgerows.  It is a
magnificent spectacle of happy-go-lucky fruitfulness.  They go
their way, penniless and rejoicing.  The sun is hot and the earth
is fertile.

But how this picture pales before that of the Lycosa, that
incomparable gipsy whose brats are numbered by the hundred!  And
one and all of them, from September to April, without a moment's
respite, find room upon the patient creature's back, where they are
content to lead a tranquil life and to be carted about.

The little ones are very good; none moves, none seeks a quarrel
with his neighbours.  Clinging together, they form a continuous
drapery, a shaggy ulster under which the mother becomes
unrecognizable.  Is it an animal, a fluff of wool, a cluster of
small seeds fastened to one another?  'Tis impossible to tell at
the first glance.

The equilibrium of this living blanket is not so firm but that
falls often occur, especially when the mother climbs from indoors
and comes to the threshold to let the little ones take the sun.
The least brush against the gallery unseats a part of the family.
The mishap is not serious.  The Hen, fidgeting about her Chicks,
looks for the strays, calls them, gathers them together.  The
Lycosa knows not these maternal alarms.  Impassively, she leaves
those who drop off to manage their own difficulty, which they do
with wonderful quickness.  Commend me to those youngsters for
getting up without whining, dusting themselves and resuming their
seat in the saddle!  The unhorsed ones promptly find a leg of the
mother, the usual climbing-pole; they swarm up it as fast as they
can and recover their places on the bearer's back.  The living bark
of animals is reconstructed in the twinkling of an eye.

To speak here of mother-love were, I think, extravagant.  The
Lycosa's affection for her offspring hardly surpasses that of the
plant, which is unacquainted with any tender feeling and
nevertheless bestows the nicest and most delicate care upon its
seeds.  The animal, in many cases, knows no other sense of
motherhood.  What cares the Lycosa for her brood!  She accepts
another's as readily as her own; she is satisfied so long as her
back is burdened with a swarming crowd, whether it issue from her
ovaries or elsewhence.  There is no question here of real maternal
affection.

I have described elsewhere the prowess of the Copris {25} watching
over cells that are not her handiwork and do not contain her
offspring.  With a zeal which even the additional labour laid upon
her does not easily weary, she removes the mildew from the alien
dung-balls, which far exceed the regular nests in number; she
gently scrapes and polishes and repairs them; she listens to them
attentively and enquires by ear into each nursling's progress.  Her
real collection could not receive greater care.  Her own family or
another's:  it is all one to her.

The Lycosa is equally indifferent.  I take a hair-pencil and sweep
the living burden from one of my Spiders, making it fall close to
another covered with her little ones.  The evicted youngsters
scamper about, find the new mother's legs outspread, nimbly clamber
up these and mount on the back of the obliging creature, who
quietly lets them have their way.

They slip in among the others, or, when the layer is too thick,
push to the front and pass from the abdomen to the thorax and even
to the head, though leaving the region of the eyes uncovered.  It
does not do to blind the bearer:  the common safety demands that.
They know this and respect the lenses of the eyes, however populous
the assembly be.  The whole animal is now covered with a swarming
carpet of young, all except the legs, which must preserve their
freedom of action, and the under part of the body, where contact
with the ground is to be feared.

My pencil forces a third family upon the already overburdened
Spider; and this too is peacefully accepted.  The youngsters huddle
up closer, lie one on top of the other in layers and room is found
for all.  The Lycosa has lost the last semblance of an animal, has
become a nameless bristling thing that walks about.  Falls are
frequent and are followed by continual climbings.

I perceive that I have reached the limits not of the bearer's good-
will, but of equilibrium.  The Spider would adopt an indefinite
further number of foundlings, if the dimensions of her back
afforded them a firm hold.  Let us be content with this.  Let us
restore each family to its mother, drawing at random from the lot.
There must necessarily be interchanges, but that is of no
importance:  real children and adopted children are the same thing
in the Lycosa's eyes.

One would like to know if, apart from my artifices, in
circumstances where I do not interfere, the good-natured dry-nurse
sometimes burdens herself with a supplementary family; it would
also be interesting to learn what comes of this association of
lawful offspring and strangers.  I have ample materials wherewith
to obtain an answer to both questions.  I have housed in the same
cage two elderly matrons laden with youngsters.  Each has her home
as far removed from the other's as the size of the common pan
permits.  The distance is nine inches or more.  It is not enough.
Proximity soon kindles fierce jealousies between those intolerant
creatures, who are obliged to live far apart, so as to secure
adequate hunting-grounds.

One morning, I catch the two harridans fighting out their quarrel
on the floor.  The loser is laid flat upon her back; the victress,
belly to belly with her adversary, clutches her with her legs and
prevents her from moving a limb.  Both have their poison-fangs wide
open, ready to bite without yet daring, so mutually formidable are
they.  After a certain period of waiting, during which the pair
merely exchange threats, the stronger of the two, the one on top,
closes her lethal engine and grinds the head of the prostrate foe.
Then she calmly devours the deceased by small mouthfuls.

Now what do the youngsters do, while their mother is being eaten?
Easily consoled, heedless of the atrocious scene, they climb on the
conqueror's back and quietly take their places among the lawful
family.  The ogress raises no objection, accepts them as her own.
She makes a meal off the mother and adopts the orphans.

Let us add that, for many months yet, until the final emancipation
comes, she will carry them without drawing any distinction between
them and her own young.  Henceforth, the two families, united in so
tragic a fashion, will form but one.  We see how greatly out of
place it would be to speak, in this connection, of mother-love and
its fond manifestations.

Does the Lycosa at least feed the younglings who, for seven months,
swarm upon her back?  Does she invite them to the banquet when she
has secured a prize?  I thought so at first; and, anxious to assist
at the family repast, I devoted special attention to watching the
mothers eat.  As a rule, the prey is consumed out of sight, in the
burrow; but sometimes also a meal is taken on the threshold, in the
open air.  Besides, it is easy to rear the Lycosa and her family in
a wire-gauze cage, with a layer of earth wherein the captive will
never dream of sinking a well, such work being out of season.
Everything then happens in the open.

Well, while the mother munches, chews, expresses the juices and
swallows, the youngsters do not budge from their camping-ground on
her back.  Not one quits its place nor gives a sign of wishing to
slip down and join in the meal.  Nor does the mother extend an
invitation to them to come and recruit themselves, nor put any
broken victuals aside for them.  She feeds and the others look on,
or rather remain indifferent to what is happening.  Their perfect
quiet during the Lycosa's feast points to the posession of a
stomach that knows no cravings.

Then with what are they sustained, during their seven months'
upbringing on the mother's back?  One conceives a notion of
exudations supplied by the bearer's body, in which case the young
would feed on their mother, after the manner of parasitic vermin,
and gradually drain her strength.

We must abandon this notion.  Never are they seen to put their
mouths to the skin that should be a sort of teat to them.  On the
other hand, the Lycosa, far from being exhausted and shrivelling,
keeps perfectly well and plump.  She has the same pot-belly when
she finishes rearing her young as when she began.  She has not lost
weight:  far from it; on the contrary, she has put on flesh:  she
has gained the wherewithal to beget a new family next summer, one
as numerous as to-day's.

Once more, with what do the little ones keep up their strength?  We
do not like to suggest reserves supplied by the egg as rectifying
the beastie's expenditure of vital force, especially when we
consider that those reserves, themselves so close to nothing, must
be economized in view of the silk, a material of the highest
importance, of which a plentiful use will be made presently.  There
must be other powers at play in the tiny animal's machinery.

Total abstinence from food could be understood, if it were
accompanied by inertia:  immobility is not life.  But the young
Lycosae, although usually quiet on their mother's back, are at all
times ready for exercise and for agile swarming.  When they fall
from the maternal perambulator, they briskly pick themselves up,
briskly scramble up a leg and make their way to the top.  It is a
splendidly nimble and spirited performance.  Besides, once seated,
they have to keep a firm balance in the mass; they have to stretch
and stiffen their little limbs in order to hang on to their
neighbours.  As a matter of fact, there is no absolute rest for
them.  Now physiology teaches us that not a fibre works without
some expenditure of energy.  The animal, which can be likened, in
no small measure, to our industrial machines, demands, on the one
hand, the renovation of its organism, which wears out with
movement, and, on the other, the maintenance of the heat
transformed into action.  We can compare it with the locomotive-
engine.  As the iron horse performs its work, it gradually wears
out its pistons, its rods, its wheels, its boiler-tubes, all of
which have to be made good from time to time.  The founder and the
smith repair it, supply it, so to speak, with 'plastic food,' the
food that becomes embodied with the whole and forms part of it.
But, though it have just come from the engine-shop, it is still
inert.  To acquire the power of movement, it must receive from the
stoker a supply of 'energy-producing food;' in other words, he
lights a few shovelfuls of coal in its inside.  This heat will
produce mechanical work.

Even so with the beast.  As nothing is made from nothing, the egg
supplies first the materials of the new-born animal; then the
plastic food, the smith of living creatures, increases the body, up
to a certain limit, and renews it as it wears away.  The stoker
works at the same time, without stopping.  Fuel, the source of
energy, makes but a short stay in the system, where it is consumed
and furnishes heat, whence movement is derived.  Life is a fire-
box.  Warmed by its food, the animal machine moves, walks, runs,
jumps, swims, flies, sets its locomotory apparatus going in a
thousand manners.

To return to the young Lycosae, they grow no larger until the
period of their emancipation.  I find them at the age of seven
months the same as when I saw them at their birth.  The egg
supplied the materials necessary for their tiny frames; and, as the
loss of waste substance is, for the moment, excessively small, or
even nil, additional plastic food is not needed so long as the
beastie does not grow.  In this respect, the prolonged abstinence
presents no difficulty.  But there remains the question of energy-
producing food, which is indispensable, for the little Lycosa
moves, when necessary, and very actively at that.  To what shall we
attribute the heat expended upon action, when the animal takes
absolutely no nourishment?

An idea suggests itself.  We say to ourselves that, without being
life, a machine is something more than matter, for man has added a
little of his mind to it.  Now the iron beast, consuming its ration
of coal, is really browsing the ancient foliage of arborescent
ferns in which solar energy has accumulated.

Beasts of flesh and blood act no otherwise.  Whether they mutually
devour one another or levy tribute on the plant, they invariably
quicken themselves with the stimulant of the sun's heat, a heat
stored in grass, fruit, seed and those which feed on such.  The
sun, the soul of the universe, is the supreme dispenser of energy.

Instead of being served up through the intermediary of food and
passing through the ignominious circuit of gastric chemistry, could
not this solar energy penetrate the animal directly and charge it
with activity, even as the battery charges an accumulator with
power?  Why not live on sun, seeing that, after all, we find naught
but sun in the fruits which we consume?

Chemical science, that bold revolutionary, promises to provide us
with synthetic food-stuffs.  The laboratory and the factory will
take the place of the farm.  Why should not physical science step
in as well?  It would leave the preparation of plastic food to the
chemist's retorts; it would reserve for itself that of energy-
producing food, which, reduced to its exact terms, ceases to be
matter.  With the aid of some ingenious apparatus, it would pump
into us our daily ration of solar energy, to be later expended in
movement, whereby the machine would be kept going without the often
painful assistance of the stomach and its adjuncts.  What a
delightful world, where one would lunch off a ray of sunshine!

Is it a dream, or the anticipation of a remote reality?  The
problem is one of the most important that science can set us.  Let
us first hear the evidence of the young Lycosae regarding its
possibilities.

For seven months, without any material nourishment, they expend
strength in moving.  To wind up the mechanism of their muscles,
they recruit themselves direct with heat and light.  During the
time when she was dragging the bag of eggs behind her, the mother,
at the best moments of the day, came and held up her pill to the
sun.  With her two hind-legs, she lifted it out of the ground, into
the full light; slowly she turned it and returned it, so that every
side might receive its share of the vivifying rays.  Well, this
bath of life, which awakened the germs, is now prolonged to keep
the tender babes active.

Daily, if the sky be clear, the Lycosa, carrying her young, comes
up from the burrow, leans on the kerb and spends long hours basking
in the sun.  Here, on their mother's back, the youngsters stretch
their limbs delightedly, saturate themselves with heat, take in
reserves of motor power, absorb energy.

They are motionless; but, if I only blow upon them, they stampede
as nimbly as though a hurricane were passing.  Hurriedly, they
disperse; hurriedly, they reassemble:  a proof that, without
material nourishment, the little animal machine is always at full
pressure, ready to work.  When the shade comes, mother and sons go
down again, surfeited with solar emanations.  The feast of energy
at the Sun Tavern is finished for the day.  It is repeated in the
same way daily, if the weather be mild, until the hour of
emancipation comes, followed by the first mouthfuls of solid food.



CHAPTER VI:  THE NARBONNE LYCOSA:  THE CLIMBING-INSTINCT



The month of March comes to an end; and the departure of the
youngsters begins, in glorious weather, during the hottest hours of
the morning.  Laden with her swarming burden, the mother Lycosa is
outside her burrow, squatting on the parapet at the entrance.  She
lets them do as they please; as though indifferent to what is
happening, she exhibits neither encouragement nor regret.  Whoso
will goes; whoso will remains behind.

First these, then those, according as they feel themselves duly
soaked with sunshine, the little ones leave the mother in batches,
run about for a moment on the ground and then quickly reach the
trellis-work of the cage, which they climb with surprising
alacrity.  They pass through the meshes, they clamber right to the
top of the citadel.  All, with not one exception, make for the
heights, instead of roaming on the ground, as might reasonably be
expected from the eminently earthly habits of the Lycosae; all
ascend the dome, a strange procedure whereof I do not yet guess the
object.

I receive a hint from the upright ring that finishes the top of the
cage.  The youngsters hurry to it.  It represents the porch of
their gymnasium.  They hang out threads across the opening; they
stretch others from the ring to the nearest points of the trellis-
work.  On these foot-bridges, they perform slack-rope exercises
amid endless comings and goings.  The tiny legs open out from time
to time and straddle as though to reach the most distant points.  I
begin to realize that they are acrobats aiming at loftier heights
than those of the dome.

I top the trellis with a branch that doubles the attainable height.
The bustling crowd hastily scrambles up it, reaches the tip of the
topmost twigs and thence sends out threads that attach themselves
to every surrounding object.  These form so many suspension-
bridges; and my beasties nimbly run along them, incessantly passing
to and fro.  One would say that they wished to climb higher still.
I will endeavour to satisfy their desires.

I take a nine-foot reed, with tiny branches spreading right up to
the top, and place it above the cage.  The little Lycosae clamber
to the very summit.  Here, longer threads are produced from the
rope-yard and are now left to float, anon converted into bridges by
the mere contact of the free end with the neighbouring supports.
The rope-dancers embark upon them and form garlands which the least
breath of air swings daintily.  The thread is invisible when it
does not come between the eyes and the sun; and the whole suggests
rows of Gnats dancing an aerial ballet.

Then, suddenly, teased by the air-currents, the delicate mooring
breaks and flies through space.  Behold the emigrants off and away,
clinging to their thread.  If the wind be favourable, they can land
at great distances.  Their departure is thus continued for a week
or two, in bands more or less numerous, according to the
temperature and the brightness of the day.  If the sky be overcast,
none dreams of leaving.  The travellers need the kisses of the sun,
which give energy and vigour.

At last, the whole family has disappeared, carried afar by its
flying-ropes.  The mother remains alone.  The loss of her offspring
hardly seems to distress her.  She retains her usual colour and
plumpness, which is a sign that the maternal exertions have not
been too much for her.

I also notice an increased fervour in the chase.  While burdened
with her family, she was remarkably abstemious, accepting only with
great reserve the game placed at her disposal.  The coldness of the
season may have militated against copious refections; perhaps also
the weight of the little ones hampered her movements and made her
more discreet in attacking the prey.

To-day, cheered by the fine weather and able to move freely, she
hurries up from her lair each time I set a tit-bit to her liking
buzzing at the entrance to her burrow; she comes and takes from my
fingers the savoury Locust, the portly Anoxia; {26} and this
performance is repeated daily, whenever I have the leisure to
devote to it.  After a frugal winter, the time has come for
plentiful repasts.

This appetite tells us that the animal is not at the point of
death; one does not feast in this way with a played-out stomach.
My boarders are entering in full vigour upon their fourth year.  In
the winter, in the fields, I used to find large mothers, carting
their young, and others not much more than half their size.  The
whole series, therefore, represented three generations.  And now,
in my earthenware pans, after the departure of the family, the old
matrons still carry on and continue as strong as ever.  Every
outward appearance tells us that, after becoming great-
grandmothers, they still keep themselves fit for propagating their
species.

The facts correspond with these anticipations.  When September
returns, my captives are dragging a bag as bulky as that of last
year.  For a long time, even when the eggs of the others have been
hatched for some weeks past, the mothers come daily to the
threshold of the burrow and hold out their wallets for incubation
by the sun.  Their perseverance is not rewarded:  nothing issues
from the satin purse; nothing stirs within.  Why?  Because, in the
prison of my cages, the eggs have had no father.  Tired of waiting
and at last recognizing the barrenness of their produce, they push
the bag of eggs outside the burrow and trouble about it no more.
At the return of spring, by which time the family, if developed
according to rule, would have been emancipated, they die.  The
mighty Spider of the waste-lands, therefore, attains to an even
more patriarchal age than her neighbour the Sacred Beetle:  {27}
she lives for five years at the very least.

Let us leave the mothers to their business and return to the
youngsters.  It is not without a certain surprise that we see the
little Lycosae, at the first moment of their emancipation, hasten
to ascend the heights.  Destined to live on the ground, amidst the
short grass, and afterwards to settle in the permanent abode, a
pit, they start by being enthusiastic acrobats.  Before descending
to the low levels, their normal dwelling-place, they affect lofty
altitudes.

To rise higher and ever higher is their first need.  I have not, it
seems, exhausted the limit of their climbing-instinct even with a
nine-foot pole, suitably furnished with branches to facilitate the
escalade.  Those who have eagerly reached the very top wave their
legs, fumble in space as though for yet higher stalks.  It behoves
us to begin again and under better conditions.

Although the Narbonne Lycosa, with her temporary yearning for the
heights, is more interesting than other Spiders, by reason of the
fact that her usual habitation is underground, she is not so
striking at swarming-time, because the youngsters, instead of all
migrating at once, leave the mother at different periods and in
small batches.  The sight will be a finer one with the common
Garden or Cross Spider, the Diadem Epeira (Epeira diadema, LIN.),
decorated with three white crosses on her back.

She lays her eggs in November and dies with the first cold snap.
She is denied the Lycosa's longevity.  She leaves the natal wallet
early one spring and never sees the following spring.  This wallet,
which contains the eggs, has none of the ingenious structure which
we admired in the Banded and in the Silky Epeira.  No longer do we
see a graceful balloon-shape nor yet a paraboloid with a starry
base; no longer a tough, waterproof satin stuff; no longer a
swan's-down resembling a fleecy, russet cloud; no longer an inner
keg in which the eggs are packed.  The art of stout fabrics and of
walls within walls is unknown here.

The work of the Cross Spider is a pill of white silk, wrought into
a yielding felt, through which the new-born Spiders will easily
work their way, without the aid of the mother, long since dead, and
without having to rely upon its bursting at the given hour.  It is
about the size of a damson.

We can judge the method of manufacture from the structure.  Like
the Lycosa, whom we saw, in Chapter III., at work in one of my
earthenware pans, the Cross Spider, on the support supplied by a
few threads stretched between the nearest objects, begins by making
a shallow saucer of sufficient thickness to dispense with
subsequent corrections.  The process is easily guessed.  The tip of
the abdomen goes up and down, down and up with an even beat, while
the worker shifts her place a little.  Each time, the spinnerets
add a bit of thread to the carpet already made.

When the requisite thickness is obtained, the mother empties her
ovaries, in one continuous flow, into the centre of the bowl.
Glued together by their inherent moisture, the eggs, of a handsome
orange-yellow, form a ball-shaped heap.  The work of the spinnerets
is resumed.  The ball of germs is covered with a silk cap,
fashioned in the same way as the saucer.  The two halves of the
work are so well joined that the whole constitutes an unbroken
sphere.

The Banded Epeira and the Silky Epeira, those experts in the
manufacture of rainproof textures, lay their eggs high up, on
brushwood and bramble, without shelter of any kind.  The thick
material of the wallets is enough to protect the eggs from the
inclemencies of the winter, especially from damp.  The Diadem
Epeira, or Cross Spider, needs a cranny for hers, which is
contained in a non-waterproof felt.  In a heap of stones, well
exposed to the sun, she will choose a large slab to serve as a
roof.  She lodges her pill underneath it, in the company of the
hibernating Snail.

More often still, she prefers the thick tangle of some dwarf shrub,
standing eight or nine inches high and retaining its leaves in
winter.  In the absence of anything better, a tuft of grass answers
the purpose.  Whatever the hiding-place, the bag of eggs is always
near the ground, tucked away as well as may be, amid the
surrounding twigs.

Save in the case of the roof supplied by a large stone, we see that
the site selected hardly satisfies proper hygienic needs.  The
Epeira seems to realize this fact.  By way of an additional
protection, even under a stone, she never fails to make a thatched
roof for her eggs.  She builds them a covering with bits of fine,
dry grass, joined together with a little silk.  The abode of the
eggs becomes a straw wigwam.

Good luck procures me two Cross Spiders' nests, on the edge of one
of the paths in the enclosure, among some tufts of ground-cypress,
or lavender-cotton.  This is just what I wanted for my plans.  The
find is all the more valuable as the period of the exodus is near
at hand.

I prepare two lengths of bamboo, standing about fifteen feet high
and clustered with little twigs from top to bottom.  I plant one of
them straight up in the tuft, beside the first nest.  I clear the
surrounding ground, because the bushy vegetation might easily,
thanks to threads carried by the wind, divert the emigrants from
the road which I have laid out for them.  The other bamboo I set up
in the middle of the yard, all by itself, some few steps from any
outstanding object.  The second nest is removed as it is, shrub and
all, and placed at the bottom of the tall, ragged distaff.

The events expected are not long in coming.  In the first fortnight
in May, a little earlier in one case, a little later in the other,
the two families, each presented with a bamboo climbing-pole, leave
their respective wallets.  There is nothing remarkable about the
mode of egress.  The precincts to be crossed consist of a very
slack net-work, through which the outcomers wriggle:  weak little
orange-yellow beasties, with a triangular black patch upon their
sterns.  One morning is long enough for the whole family to make
its appearance.

By degrees, the emancipated youngsters climb the nearest twigs,
clamber to the top, and spread a few threads.  Soon, they gather in
a compact, ball-shaped cluster, the size of a walnut.  They remain
motionless.  With their heads plunged into the heap and their
sterns projecting, they doze gently, mellowing under the kisses of
the sun.  Rich in the possession of a thread in their belly as
their sole inheritance, they prepare to disperse over the wide
world.

Let us create a disturbance among the globular group by stirring it
with a straw.  All wake up at once.  The cluster softly dilates and
spreads, as though set in motion by some centrifugal force; it
becomes a transparent orb wherein thousands and thousands of tiny
legs quiver and shake, while threads are extended along the way to
be followed.  The whole work resolves itself into a delicate veil
which swallows up the scattered family.  We then see an exquisite
nebula against whose opalescent tapestry the tiny animals gleam
like twinkling orange stars.

This straggling state, though it last for hours, is but temporary.
If the air grow cooler, if rain threaten, the spherical group
reforms at once.  This is a protective measure.  On the morning
after a shower, I find the families on either bamboo in as good
condition as on the day before.  The silk veil and the pill
formation have sheltered them well enough from the downpour.  Even
so do Sheep, when caught in a storm in the pastures, gather close,
huddle together and make a common rampart of their backs.

The assembly into a ball-shaped mass is also the rule in calm,
bright weather, after the morning's exertions.  In the afternoon,
the climbers collect at a higher point, where they weave a wide,
conical tent, with the end of a shoot for its top, and, gathered
into a compact group, spend the night there.  Next day, when the
heat returns, the ascent is resumed in long files, following the
shrouds which a few pioneers have rigged and which those who come
after elaborate with their own work.

Collected nightly into a globular troop and sheltered under a fresh
tent, for three or four days, each morning, before the sun grows
too hot, my little emigrants thus raise themselves, stage by stage,
on both bamboos, until they reach the sun-unit, at fifteen feet
above the ground.  The climb comes to an end for lack of foothold.

Under normal conditions, the ascent would be shorter.  The young
Spiders have at their disposal the bushes, the brushwood, providing
supports on every side for the threads wafted hither and thither by
the eddying air-currents.  With these rope-bridges flung across
space, the dispersal presents no difficulties.  Each emigrant
leaves at his own good time and travels as suits him best.

My devices have changed these conditions somewhat.  My two
bristling poles stand at a distance from the surrounding shrubs,
especially the one which I planted in the middle of the yard.
Bridges are out of the question, for the threads flung into the air
are not long enough.  And so the acrobats, eager to get away, keep
on climbing, never come down again, are impelled to seek in a
higher position what they have failed to find in a lower.  The top
of my two bamboos probably fails to represent the limit of what my
keen climbers are capable of achieving.

We shall see, in a moment, the object of this climbing-propensity,
which is a sufficiently remarkable instinct in the Garden Spiders,
who have as their domain the low-growing brushwood wherein their
nets are spread; it becomes a still more remarkable instinct in the
Lycosa, who, except at the moment when she leaves her mother's
back, never quits the ground and yet, in the early hours of her
life, shows herself as ardent a wooer of high places as the young
Garden Spiders.

Let us consider the Lycosa in particular.  In her, at the moment of
the exodus, a sudden instinct arises, to disappear, as promptly and
for ever, a few hours later.  This is the climbing-instinct, which
is unknown to the adult and soon forgotten by the emancipated
youngling, doomed to wander homeless, for many a long day, upon the
ground.  Neither of them dreams of climbing to the top of a grass-
stalk.  The full-grown Spider hunts trapper-fashion, ambushed in
her tower; the young one hunts afoot through the scrubby grass.  In
both cases there is no web and therefore no need for lofty contact-
points.  They are not allowed to quit the ground and climb the
heights.

Yet here we have the young Lycosa, wishing to leave the maternal
abode and to travel far afield by the easiest and swiftest methods,
suddenly becoming an enthusiastic climber.  Impetuously she scales
the wire trellis of the cage where she was born; hurriedly she
clambers to the top of the tall mast which I have prepared for her.
In the same way, she would make for the summit of the bushes in her
waste-land.

We catch a glimpse of her object.  From on high, finding a wide
space beneath her, she sends a thread floating.  It is caught by
the wind and carries her hanging to it.  We have our aeroplanes;
she too possesses her flying-machine.  Once the journey is
accomplished, naught remains of this ingenious business.  The
climbing-instinct conies suddenly, at the hour of need, and no less
suddenly vanishes.



CHAPTER VII:  THE SPIDERS' EXODUS



Seeds, when ripened in the fruit, are disseminated, that is to say,
scattered on the surface of the ground, to sprout in spots as yet
unoccupied and fill the expanses that realize favourable
conditions.

Amid the wayside rubbish grows one of the gourd family, Ecbalium
elaterium, commonly called the squirting cucumber, whose fruit--a
rough and extremely bitter little cucumber--is the size of a date.
When ripe, the fleshy core resolves into a liquid in which float
the seeds.  Compressed by the elastic rind of the fruit, this
liquid bears upon the base of the footstalk, which is gradually
forced out, yields like a stopper, breaks off and leaves an orifice
through which a stream of seeds and fluid pulp is suddenly ejected.
If, with a novice hand, under a scorching sun, you shake the plant
laden with yellow fruit, you are bound to be somewhat startled when
you hear a noise among the leaves and receive the cucumber's
grapeshot in your face.

The fruit of the garden balsam, when ripe, splits, at the least
touch, into five fleshy valves, which curl up and shoot their seeds
to a distance.  The botanical name of Impatiens given to the balsam
alludes to this sudden dehiscence of the capsules, which cannot
endure contact without bursting.

In the damp and shady places of the woods there exists a plant of
the same family which, for similar reasons, bears the even more
expressive name of Impatiens noli-me-tangere, or touch-me-not.

The capsule of the pansy expands into three valves, each scooped
out like a boat and laden in the middle with two rows of seeds.
When these valves dry, the edges shrivel, press upon the grains and
eject them.

Light seeds, especially those of the order of Compositae, have
aeronautic apparatus--tufts, plumes, fly-wheels--which keep them up
in the air and enable them to take distant voyages.  In this way,
at the least breath, the seeds of the dandelion, surmounted by a
tuft of feathers, fly from their dry receptacle and waft gently in
the air.

Next to the tuft, the wing is the most satisfactory contrivance for
dissemination by wind.  Thanks to their membranous edge, which
gives them the appearance of thin scales, the seeds of the yellow
wall-flower reach high cornices of buildings, clefts of
inaccessible rocks, crannies in old walls, and sprout in the
remnant of mould bequeathed by the mosses that were there before
them.

The samaras, or keys, of the elm, formed of a broad, light fan with
the seed cased in its centre; those of the maple, joined in pairs
and resembling the unfurled wings of a bird; those of the ash,
carved like the blade of an oar, perform the most distant journeys
when driven before the storm.

Like the plant, the insect also sometimes possesses travelling-
apparatus, means of dissemination that allow large families to
disperse quickly over the country, so that each member may have his
place in the sun without injuring his neighbour; and these
apparatus, these methods vie in ingenuity with the elm's samara,
the dandelion-plume and the catapult of the squirting cucumber.

Let us consider, in particular, the Epeirae, those magnificent
Spiders who, to catch their prey, stretch, between one bush and the
next, great vertical sheets of meshes, resembling those of the
fowler.  The most remarkable in my district is the Banded Epeira
(Epeira fasciata, WALCK.), so prettily belted with yellow, black
and silvery white.  Her nest, a marvel of gracefulness, is a satin
bag, shaped like a tiny pear.  Its neck ends in a concave
mouthpiece closed with a lid, also of satin.  Brown ribbons, in
fanciful meridian waves, adorn the object from pole to pole.

Open the nest.  We have seen, in an earlier chapter, {28} what we
find there; let us retell the story.  Under the outer wrapper,
which is as stout as our woven stuffs and, moreover, perfectly
waterproof, is a russet eiderdown of exquisite delicacy, a silky
fluff resembling driven smoke.  Nowhere does mother-love prepare a
softer bed.

In the middle of this downy mass hangs a fine, silk, thimble-shaped
purse, closed with a movable lid.  This contains the eggs, of a
pretty orange-yellow and about five hundred in number.

All things considered, is not this charming edifice an animal
fruit, a germ-casket, a capsule to be compared with that of the
plants?  Only, the Epeira's wallet, instead of seeds, holds eggs.
The difference is more apparent than real, for egg and grain are
one.

How will this living fruit, ripening in the heat beloved of the
Cicadae, manage to burst?  How, above all, will dissemination take
place?  They are there in their hundreds.  They must separate, go
far away, isolate themselves in a spot where there is not too much
fear of competition among neighbours.  How will they set to work to
achieve this distant exodus, weaklings that they are, taking such
very tiny steps?

I receive the first answer from another and much earlier Epeira,
whose family I find, at the beginning of May, on a yucca in the
enclosure.  The plant blossomed last year.  The branching flower-
stem, some three feet high, still stands erect, though withered.
On the green leaves, shaped like a sword-blade, swarm two newly-
hatched families.  The wee beasties are a dull yellow, with a
triangular black patch upon their stern.  Later on, three white
crosses, ornamenting the back, will tell me that my find
corresponds with the Cross or Diadem Spider (Epeira diadema,
WALCK.).

When the sun reaches this part of the enclosure, one of the two
groups falls into a great state of flutter.  Nimble acrobats that
they are, the little Spiders scramble up, one after the other, and
reach the top of the stem.  Here, marches and countermarches,
tumult and confusion reign, for there is a slight breeze which
throws the troop into disorder.  I see no connected manoeuvres.
From the top of the stalk they set out at every moment, one by one;
they dart off suddenly; they fly away, so to speak.  It is as
though they had the wings of a Gnat.

Forthwith they disappear from view.  Nothing that my eyes can see
explains this strange flight; for precise observation is impossible
amid the disturbing influences out of doors.  What is wanted is a
peaceful atmosphere and the quiet of my study.

I gather the family in a large box, which I close at once, and
instal it in the animals' laboratory, on a small table, two steps
from the open window.  Apprised by what I have just seen of their
propensity to resort to the heights, I give my subjects a bundle of
twigs, eighteen inches tall, as a climbing-pole.  The whole band
hurriedly clambers up and reaches the top.  In a few moments there
is not one lacking in the group on high.  The future will tell us
the reason of this assemblage on the projecting tips of the twigs.

The little Spiders are now spinning here and there at random:  they
go up, go down, come up again.  Thus is woven a light veil of
divergent threads, a many-cornered web with the end of the branch
for its summit and the edge of the table for its base, some
eighteen inches wide.  This veil is the drill-ground, the work-yard
where the preparations for departure are made.

Here hasten the humble little creatures, running indefatigably to
and fro.  When the sun shines upon them, they become gleaming
specks and form upon the milky background of the veil a sort of
constellation, a reflex of those remote points in the sky where the
telescope shows us endless galaxies of stars.  The immeasurably
small and the immeasurably large are alike in appearance.  It is
all a matter of distance.

But the living nebula is not composed of fixed stars; on the
contrary, its specks are in continual movement.  The young Spiders
never cease shifting their position on the web.  Many let
themselves drop, hanging by a length of thread, which the faller's
weight draws from the spinnerets.  Then quickly they climb up again
by the same thread, which they wind gradually into a skein and
lengthen by successive falls.  Others confine themselves to running
about the web and also give me the impression of working at a
bundle of ropes.

The thread, as a matter of fact, does not flow from the spinneret;
it is drawn thence with a certain effort.  It is a case of
extraction, not emission.  To obtain her slender cord, the Spider
has to move about and haul, either by falling or by walking, even
as the rope-maker steps backwards when working his hemp.  The
activity now displayed on the drill-ground is a preparation for the
approaching dispersal.  The travellers are packing up.

Soon we see a few Spiders trotting briskly between the table and
the open window.  They are running in mid-air.  But on what?  If
the light fall favourably, I manage to see, at moments, behind the
tiny animal, a thread resembling a ray of light, which appears for
an instant, gleams and disappears.  Behind, therefore, there is a
mooring, only just perceptible, if you look very carefully; but, in
front, towards the window, there is nothing to be seen at all.

In vain I examine above, below, at the side; in vain I vary the
direction of the eye:  I can distinguish no support for the little
creature to walk upon.  One would think that the beastie were
paddling in space.  It suggests the idea of a small bird, tied by
the leg with a thread and making a flying rush forwards.

But, in this case, appearances are deceptive:  flight is
impossible; the Spider must necessarily have a bridge whereby to
cross the intervening space.  This bridge, which I cannot see, I
can at least destroy.  I cleave the air with a ruler in front of
the Spider making for the window.  That is quite enough:  the tiny
animal at once ceases to go forward and falls.  The invisible foot-
plank is broken.  My son, young Paul, who is helping me, is
astounded at this wave of the magic wand, for not even he, with his
fresh, young eyes, is able to see a support ahead for the
Spiderling to move along.

In the rear, on the other hand, a thread is visible.  The
difference is easily explained.  Every Spider, as she goes, at the
same time spins a safety-cord which will guard the rope-walker
against the risk of an always possible fall.  In the rear,
therefore, the thread is of double thickness and can be seen,
whereas, in front, it is still single and hardly perceptible to the
eye.

Obviously, this invisible foot-bridge is not flung out by the
animal:  it is carried and unrolled by a gust of air.  The Epeira,
supplied with this line, lets it float freely; and the wind,
however softly blowing, bears it along and unwinds it.  Even so is
the smoke from the bowl of a pipe whirled up in the air.

This floating thread has but to touch any object in the
neighbourhood and it will remain fixed to it.  The suspension-
bridge is thrown; and the Spider can set out.  The South-American
Indians are said to cross the abysses of the Cordilleras in
travelling-cradles made of twisted creepers; the little Spider
passes through space on the invisible and the imponderable.

But to carry the end of the floating thread elsewhither a draught
is needed.  At this moment, the draught exists between the door of
my study and the window, both of which are open.  It is so slight
that I do not feel its; I only know of it by the smoke from my
pipe, curling softly in that direction.  Cold air enters from
without through the door; warm air escapes from the room through
the window.  This is the drought that carries the threads with it
and enables the Spiders to embark upon their journey.

I get rid of it by closing both apertures and I break off any
communication by passing my ruler between the window and the table.
Henceforth, in the motionless atmosphere, there are no departures.
The current of air is missing, the skeins are not unwound and
migration becomes impossible.

It is soon resumed, but in a direction whereof I never dreamt.  The
hot sun is beating on a certain part of the floor.  At this spot,
which is warmer than the rest, a column of lighter, ascending air
is generated.  If this column catch the threads, my Spiders ought
to rise to the ceiling of the room.

The curious ascent does, in fact, take place.  Unfortunately, my
troop, which has been greatly reduced by the number of departures
through the window, does not lend itself to prolonged experiment.
We must begin again.

The next morning, on the same yucca, I gather the second family, as
numerous as the first.  Yesterday's preparations are repeated.  My
legion of Spiders first weaves a divergent framework between the
top of the brushwood placed at the emigrants' disposal and the edge
of the table.  Five or six hundred wee beasties swarm all over this
work-yard.

While this little world is busily fussing, making its arrangements
for departure, I make my own.  Every aperture in the room is
closed, so as to obtain as calm an atmosphere as possible.  A small
chafing-dish is lit at the foot of the table.  My hands cannot feel
the heat of it at the level of the web whereon my Spiders are
weaving.  This is the very modest fire which, with its column of
rising air, shall unwind the threads and carry them on high.

Let us first enquire the direction and strength of the current.
Dandelion-plumes, made lighter by the removal of their seeds, serve
as my guides.  Released above the chafing-dish, on the level of the
table, they float slowly upwards and, for the most part, reach the
ceiling.  The emigrants' lines should rise in the same way and even
better.

The thing is done:  with the aid of nothing that is visible to the
three of us looking on, a Spider makes her ascent.  She ambles with
her eight legs through the air; she mounts, gently swaying.  The
others, in ever-increasing numbers, follow, sometimes by different
roads, sometimes by the same road.  Any one who did not possess the
secret would stand amazed at this magic ascent without a ladder.
In a few minutes, most of them are up, clinging to the ceiling.

Not all of them reach it.  I see some who, on attaining a certain
height, cease to go up and even lose ground, although moving their
legs forward with all the nimbleness of which they are capable.
The more they struggle upwards, the faster they come down.  This
drifting, which neutralizes the distance covered and even converts
it into a retrogression, is easily explained.

The thread has not reached the platform; it floats, it is fixed
only at the lower end.  As long as it is of a fair length, it is
able, although moving, to bear the minute animal's weight.  But, as
the Spider climbs, the float becomes shorter in proportion; and the
time comes when a balance is struck between the ascensional force
of the thread and the weight carried.  Then the beastie remains
stationary, although continuing to climb.

Presently, the weight becomes too much for the shorter and shorter
float; and the Spider slips down, in spite of her persistent,
forward striving.  She is at last brought back to the branch by the
falling threads.  Here, the ascent is soon renewed, either on a
fresh thread, if the supply of silk be not yet exhausted, or on a
strange thread, the work, of those who have gone before.

As a rule, the ceiling is reached.  It is twelve feet high.  The
little Spider is able, therefore, as the first product of her
spinning-mill, before taking any refreshment, to obtain a line
fully twelve feet in length.  And all this, the rope-maker and her
rope, was contained in the egg, a particle of no size at all.  To
what a degree of fineness can the silky matter be wrought wherewith
the young Spider is provided!  Our manufacturers are able to turn
out platinum-wire that can only be seen when it is made red-hot.
With much simpler means, the Spiderling draws from her wire-mill
threads so delicate that, even the brilliant light of the sun does
not always enable us to discern them.

We must not let all the climbers be stranded on the ceiling, an
inhospitable region where most of them will doubtless perish, being
unable to produce a second thread before they have had a meal.  I
open the window.  A current of lukewarm air, coming from the
chafing-dish, escapes through the top.  Dandelion-plumes, taking
that direction, tell me so.  The wafting threads cannot fail to be
carried by this flow of air and to lengthen out in the open, where
a light breeze is blowing.

I take a pair of sharp scissors and, without shaking the threads,
cut a few that are just visible at the base, where they are
thickened with an added strand.  The result of this operation is
marvellous.  Hanging to the flying-rope, which is borne on the wind
outside, the Spider passes through the window, suddenly flies off
and disappears.  An easy way of travelling, if the conveyance
possessed a rudder that allowed the passenger to land where he
pleases!  But the little things are at the mercy of the winds:
where will they alight?  Hundreds, thousands of yards away,
perhaps.  Let us wish them a prosperous journey.

The problem of dissemination is now solved.  What would happen if
matters, instead of being brought about by my wiles, took place in
the open fields?  The answer is obvious.  The young Spiders, born
acrobats and rope-walkers, climb to the top of a branch so as to
find sufficient space below them to unfurl their apparatus.  Here,
each draws from her rope-factory a thread which she abandons to the
eddies of the air.  Gently raised by the currents that ascend from
the ground warmed by the sun, this thread wafts upwards, floats,
undulates, makes for its point of contact.  At last, it breaks and
vanishes in the distance, carrying the spinstress hanging to it.

The Epeira with the three white crosses, the Spider who has
supplied us with these first data concerning the process of
dissemination, is endowed with a moderate maternal industry.  As a
receptacle for the eggs, she weaves a mere pill of silk.  Her work
is modest indeed beside the Banded Epeira's balloons.  I looked to
these to supply me with fuller documents.  I had laid up a store by
rearing some mothers during the autumn.  So that nothing of
importance might escape me, I divided my stock of balloons, most of
which were woven before my eyes, into two sections.  One half
remained in my study, under a wire-gauze cover, with, small bunches
of brushwood as supports; the other half were experiencing the
vicissitudes of open-air life on the rosemaries in the enclosure.

These preparations, which promised so well, did not provide me with
the sight which I expected, namely, a magnificent exodus, worthy of
the tabernacle occupied.  However, a few results, not devoid of
interest, are to be noted.  Let us state them briefly.

The hatching takes place as March approaches.  When this time
comes, let us open the Banded Epeira's nest with the scissors.  We
shall find that some of the youngsters have already left the
central chamber and scattered over the surrounding eiderdown, while
the rest of the laying still consists of a compact mass of orange
eggs.  The appearance of the younglings is not simultaneous; it
takes place with intermissions and may last a couple of weeks.

Nothing as yet suggests the future, richly-striped livery.  The
abdomen is white and, as it were, floury in the front half; in the
other half it is a blackish-brown.  The rest of the body is pale-
yellow, except in front, where the eyes form a black edging.  When
left alone, the little ones remain motionless in the soft, russet
swan's-down; if disturbed, they shuffle lazily where they are, or
even walk about in a hesitating and unsteady fashion.  One can see
that they have to ripen before venturing outside.

Maturity is achieved in the exquisite floss that surrounds the
natal chamber and fills out the balloon.  This is the waiting-room
in which the body hardens.  All dive into it as and when they
emerge from the central keg.  They will not leave it until four
months later, when the midsummer heats have come.

Their number is considerable.  A patient and careful census gives
me nearly six hundred.  And all this comes out of a purse no larger
than a pea.  By what miracle is there room for such a family?  How
do those thousands of legs manage to grow without straining
themselves?

The egg-bag, as we learnt in Chapter II., is a short cylinder
rounded at the bottom.  It is formed of compact white satin, an
insuperable barrier.  It opens into a round orifice wherein is
bedded a lid of the same material, through which the feeble
beasties would be incapable of passing.  It is not a porous felt,
but a fabric as tough as that of the sack.  Then by what mechanism
is the delivery effected?

Observe that the disk of the lid doubles back into a short fold,
which edges into the orifice of the bag.  In the same way, the lid
of a sauce-pan fits the mouth by means of a projecting rim, with
this difference, that the rim is not attached to the saucepan,
whereas, in the Epeira's work, it is soldered to the bag or nest.
Well, at the time of the hatching, this disk becomes unstuck, lifts
and allows the new-born Spiders to pass through.

If the rim were movable and simply inserted, if, moreover, the
birth of all the family took place at the same time, we might think
that the door is forced open by the living wave of inmates, who
would set their backs to it with a common effort.  We should find
an approximate image in the case of the saucepan, whose lid is
raised by the boiling of its contents.  But the fabric of the cover
is one with the fabric of the bag, the two are closely welded;
besides, the hatching is effected in small batches, incapable of
the least exertion.  There must, therefore, be a spontaneous
bursting, or dehiscence, independent of the assistance of the
youngsters and similar to that of the seed-pods of plants.

When fully ripened, the dry fruit of the snap-dragon opens three
windows; that of the pimpernel splits into two rounded halves,
something like those of the outer case of a fob-watch; the fruit of
the carnation partly unseals its valves and opens at the top into a
star-shaped hatch.  Each seed-casket has its own system of locks,
which are made to work smoothly by the mere kiss of the sun.

Well, that other dry fruit, the Banded Epeira's germ-box, likewise
possesses its bursting-gear.  As long as the eggs remain unhatched,
the door, solidly fixed in its frame, holds good; as soon as the
little ones swarm and want to get out, it opens of itself.

Come June and July, beloved of the Cicadae, no less beloved of the
young Spiders who are anxious to be off.  It were difficult indeed
for them to work their way through the thick shell of the balloon.
For the second time, a spontaneous dehiscence seems called for.
Where will it be effected?

The idea occurs off-hand that it will take place along the edges of
the top cover.  Remember the details given in an earlier chapter.
The neck of the balloon ends in a wide crater, which is closed by a
ceiling dug out cup-wise.  The material is as stout in this part as
in any other; but, as the lid was the finishing touch to the work,
we expect to find an incomplete soldering, which would allow it to
be unfastened.

The method of construction deceives us:  the ceiling is immovable;
at no season can my forceps manage to extract it, without
destroying the building from top to bottom.  The dehiscence takes
place elsewhere, at some point on the sides.  Nothing informs us,
nothing suggests to us that it will occur at one place rather than
another.

Moreover, to tell the truth, it is not a dehiscence prepared by
means of some dainty piece of mechanism; it is a very irregular
tear.  Somewhat sharply, under the fierce heat of the sun, the
satin bursts like the rind of an over-ripe pomegranate.  Judging by
the result, we think of the expansion of the air inside, which,
heated by the sun, causes this rupture.  The signs of pressure from
within are manifest:  the tatters of the torn fabric are turned
outwards; also, a wisp of the russet eiderdown that fills the
wallet invariably straggles through the breach.  In the midst of
the protruding floss, the Spiderlings, expelled from their home by
the explosion, are in frantic commotion.

The balloons of the Banded Epeira are bombs which, to free their
contents, burst under the rays of a torrid sun.  To break they need
the fiery heat-waves of the dog-days.  When kept in the moderate
atmosphere of my study, most of them do not open and the emergence
of the young does not take place, unless I myself I have a hand in
the business; a few others open with a round hole, a hole so neat
that it might have been made with a punch.  This aperture is the
work of the prisoners, who, relieving one another in turns, have,
with a patient tooth, bitten through the stuff of the jar at some
point or other.

When exposed to the full force of the sun, however, on the
rosemaries in the enclosure, the balloons burst and shoot forth a
ruddy flood of floss and tiny animals.  That is how things occur in
the free sun-bath of the fields.  Unsheltered, among the bushes,
the wallet of the Banded Epeira, when the July heat arrives, splits
under the effort of the inner air.  The delivery is effected by an
explosion of the dwelling.

A very small part of the family are expelled with the flow of tawny
floss; the vast majority remain in the bag, which is ripped open,
but still bulges with eiderdown.  Now that the breach is made, any
one can go out who pleases, in his own good time, without hurrying.
Besides, a solemn action has to be performed before the emigration.
The animal must cast its skin; and the moult is an event that does
not fall on the same date for all.  The evacuation of the place,
therefore, lasts several days.  It is effected in small squads, as
the slough is flung aside.

Those who sally forth climb up the neighbouring twigs and there, in
the full heat of the sun, proceed with the work of dissemination.
The method is the same as that which we saw in the case of the
Cross Spider.  The spinnerets abandon to the breeze a thread that
floats, breaks and flies away, carrying the rope-maker with it.
The number of starters on any one morning is so small as to rob the
spectacle of the greater part of its interest.  The scene lacks
animation because of the absence of a crowd.

To my intense disappointment, the Silky Epeira does not either
indulge in a tumultuous and dashing exodus.  Let me remind you of
her handiwork, the handsomest of the maternal wallets, next to the
Banded Epeira's.  It is an obtuse conoid, closed with a star-shaped
disk.  It is made of a stouter and especially a thicker material
than the Banded Epeira's balloon, for which reason a spontaneous
rupture becomes more necessary than ever.

This rupture is effected at the sides of the bag, not far from the
edge of the lid.  Like the ripping of the balloon, it requires the
rough aid of the heat of July.  Its mechanism also seems to work by
the expansion of the heated air, for we again see a partial
emission of the silky floss that fills the pouch.

The exit of the family is performed in a single group and, this
time, before the moult, perhaps for lack of the space necessary for
the delicate casting of the skin.  The conical bag falls far short
of the balloon in size; those packed within would sprain their legs
in extracting them from their sheaths.  The family, therefore,
emerges in a body and settles on a sprig hard by.

This is a temporary camping-ground, where, spinning in unison, the
youngsters soon weave an open-work tent, the abode of a week, or
thereabouts.  The moult is effected in this lounge of intersecting
threads.  The sloughed skins form a heap at the bottom of the
dwelling; on the trapezes above, the flaylings take exercise and
gain strength and vigour.  Finally, when maturity is attained, they
set out, now these, now those, little by little and always
cautiously.  There are no audacious flights on the thready air-
ship; the journey is accomplished by modest stages.

Hanging to her thread, the Spider lets herself drop straight down,
to a depth of nine or ten inches.  A breath of air sets her
swinging like a pendulum, sometimes drives her against a
neighbouring branch.  This is a step towards the dispersal.  At the
point reached, there is a fresh fall, followed by a fresh pendulous
swing that lands her a little farther afield.  Thus, in short
tacks, for the thread is never very long, does the Spiderling go
about, seeing the country, until she comes to a place that suits
her.  Should the wind blow at all hard, the voyage is cut short:
the cable of the pendulum breaks and the beastie is carried for
some distance on its cord.

To sum up, although, on the whole, the tactics of the exodus remain
much the same, the two spinstresses of my region best-versed in the
art of weaving mothers' wallets failed to come up to my
expectations.  I went to the trouble of rearing them, with
disappointing results.  Where shall I find again the wonderful
spectacle which the Cross Spider offered me by chance?  I shall
find it--in an even more striking fashion--among humbler Spiders,
whom I had neglected to observe.



CHAPTER VIII:  THE CRAB SPIDER



The Spider that showed me the exodus in all its magnificence is
known officially as Thomisus onustus, WALCK.  Though the name
suggest nothing to the reader's mind, it has the advantage, at any
rate, of hurting neither the throat nor the ear, as is too often
the case with scientific nomenclature, which sounds more like
sneezing than articulate speech.  Since it is the rule to dignify
plants and animals with a Latin label, let us at least respect the
euphony of the classics and refrain from harsh splutters which spit
out a name instead of pronouncing it.

What will posterity do in face of the rising tide of a barbarous
vocabulary which, under the pretence of progress, stifles real
knowledge?  It will relegate the whole business to the quagmire of
oblivion.  But what will never disappear is the popular name, which
sounds well, is picturesque and conveys some sort of information.
Such is the term Crab Spider, applied by the ancients to the group
to which the Thomisus belongs, a pretty accurate term, for, in this
case, there is an evident analogy between the Spider and the
Crustacean.

Like the Crab, the Thomisus walks sideways; she also has fore-legs
stronger than her hind-legs.  The only thing wanting to complete
the resemblance is the front pair of stone gauntlets, raised in the
attitude of self-defence.

The Spider with the Crab-like figure does not know how to
manufacture nets for catching game.  Without springs or snares, she
lies in ambush, among the flowers, and awaits the arrival of the
quarry, which she kills by administering a scientific stab in the
neck.  The Thomisus, in particular, the subject of this chapter, is
passionately addicted to the pursuit of the Domestic Bee.  I have
described the contests between the victim and her executioner, at
greater length, elsewhere.

The Bee appears, seeking no quarrel, intent upon plunder.  She
tests the flowers with her tongue; she selects a spot that will
yield a good return.  Soon she is wrapped up in her harvesting.
While she is filling her baskets and distending her crop, the
Thomisus, that bandit lurking under cover of the flowers, issues
from her hiding-place, creeps round behind the bustling insect,
steals up close and, with a sudden rush, nabs her in the nape of
the neck.  In vain, the Bee protests and darts her sting at random;
the assailant does not let go.

Besides, the bite in the neck is paralysing, because the cervical
nerve-centres are affected.  The poor thing's legs stiffen; and all
is over in a second.  The murderess now sucks the victim's blood at
her ease and, when she has done, scornfully flings the drained
corpse aside.  She hides herself once more, ready to bleed a second
gleaner should the occasion offer.

This slaughter of the Bee engaged in the hallowed delights of
labour has always revolted me.  Why should there be workers to feed
idlers, why sweated to keep sweaters in luxury?  Why should so many
admirable lives be sacrificed to the greater prosperity of
brigandage?  These hateful discords amid the general harmony
perplex the thinker, all the more as we shall see the cruel vampire
become a model of devotion where her family is concerned.

The ogre loved his children; he ate the children of others.  Under
the tyranny of the stomach, we are all of us, beasts and men alike,
ogres.  The dignity of labour, the joy of life, maternal affection,
the terrors of death:  all these do not count, in others; the main
point is that morsel the be tender and savoury.

According to the etymology of her name--[Greek text], a cord--the
Thomisus should be like the ancient lictor, who bound the sufferer
to the stake.  The comparison is not inappropriate as regards many
Spiders who tie their prey with a thread to subdue it and consume
it at their ease; but it just happens that the Thomisus is at
variance with her label.  She does not fasten her Bee, who, dying
suddenly of a bite in the neck, offers no resistance to her
consumer.  Carried away by his recollection of the regular tactics,
our Spider's godfather overlooked the exception; he did not know of
the perfidious mode of attack which renders the use of a bow-string
superfluous.

Nor is the second name of onustus--loaded, burdened, freighted--any
too happily chosen.  The fact that the Bee-huntress carries a heavy
paunch is no reason to refer to this as a distinctive
characteristic.  Nearly all Spiders have a voluminous belly, a
silk-warehouse where, in some cases, the rigging of the net, in
others, the swan's-down of the nest is manufactured.  The Thomisus,
a first-class nest-builder, does like the rest:  she hoards in her
abdomen, but without undue display of obesity, the wherewithal to
house her family snugly.

Can the expression onustus refer simply to her slow and sidelong
walk?  The explanation appeals to me, without satisfying me fully.
Except in the case of a sudden alarm, every Spider maintains a
sober gait and a wary pace.  When all is said, the scientific term
is composed of a misconception and a worthless epithet.  How
difficult it is to name animals rationally!  Let us be indulgent to
the nomenclator:  the dictionary is becoming exhausted and the
constant flood that requires cataloguing mounts incessantly,
wearing out our combinations of syllables.

As the technical name tells the reader nothing, how shall he be
informed?  I see but one means, which is to invite him to the May
festivals, in the waste-lands of the South.  The murderess of the
Bees is of a chilly constitution; in our parts, she hardly ever
moves away from the olive-districts.  Her favourite shrub is the
white-leaved rock-rose (Cistus albidus), with the large, pink,
crumpled, ephemeral blooms that last but a morning and are
replaced, next day, by fresh flowers, which have blossomed in the
cool dawn.  This glorious efflorescence goes on for five or six
weeks.

Here, the Bees plunder enthusiastically, fussing and bustling in
the spacious whorl of the stamens, which beflour them with yellow.
Their persecutrix knows of this affluence.  She posts herself in
her watch-house, under the rosy screen of a petal.  Cast your eyes
over the flower, more or less everywhere.  If you see a Bee lying
lifeless, with legs and tongue out-stretched, draw nearer:  the
Thomisus will be there, nine times out of ten.  The thug has struck
her blow; she is draining the blood of the departed.

After all, this cutter of Bees' throats is a pretty, a very pretty
creature, despite her unwieldy paunch fashioned like a squat
pyramid and embossed on the base, on either side, with a pimple
shaped like a camel's hump.  The skin, more pleasing to the eye
than any satin, is milk-white in some, in others lemon-yellow.
There are fine ladies among them who adorn their legs with a number
of pink bracelets and their back with carmine arabesques.  A narrow
pale-green ribbon sometimes edges the right and left of the breast.
It is not so rich as the costume of the Banded Epeira, but much
more elegant because of its soberness, its daintiness and the
artful blending of its hues.  Novice fingers, which shrink from
touching any other Spider, allow themselves to be enticed by these
attractions; they do not fear to handle the beauteous Thomisus, so
gentle in appearance.

Well, what can this gem among Spiders do?  In the first place, she
makes a nest worthy of its architect.  With twigs and horse-hair
and bits of wool, the Goldfinch, the Chaffinch and other masters of
the builder's art construct an aerial bower in the fork of the
branches.  Herself a lover of high places, the Thomisus selects as
the site of her nest one of the upper twigs of the rock-rose, her
regular hunting-ground, a twig withered by the heat and possessing
a few dead leaves, which curl into a little cottage.  This is where
she settles with a view to her eggs.

Ascending and descending with a gentle swing in more or less every
direction, the living shuttle, swollen with silk, weaves a bag
whose outer casing becomes one with the dry leaves around.  The
work, which is partly visible and partly hidden by its supports, is
a pure dead-white.  Its shape, moulded in the angular interval
between the bent leaves, is that of a cone and reminds us, on a
smaller scale, of the nest of the Silky Epeira.

When the eggs are laid, the mouth of the receptacle is hermetically
closed with a lid of the same white silk.  Lastly, a few threads,
stretched like a thin curtain, form a canopy above the nest and,
with the curved tips of the leaves, frame a sort of alcove wherein
the mother takes up her abode.

It is more than a place of rest after the fatigues of her
confinement:  it is a guard-room, an inspection-post where the
mother remains sprawling until the youngsters' exodus.  Greatly
emaciated by the laying of her eggs and by her expenditure of silk,
she lives only for the protection of her nest.

Should some vagrant pass near by, she hurries from her watch-tower,
lifts a limb and puts the intruder to flight.  If I tease her with
a straw, she parries with big gestures, like those of a prize-
fighter.  She uses her fists against my weapon.  When I propose to
dislodge her in view of certain experiments, I find some difficulty
in doing so.  She clings to the silken floor, she frustrates my
attacks, which I am bound to moderate lest I should injure her.
She is no sooner attracted outside than she stubbornly returns to
her post.  She declines to leave her treasure.

Even so does the Narbonne Lycosa struggle when we try to take away
her pill.  Each displays the same pluck and the same devotion; and
also the same denseness in distinguishing her property from that of
others.  The Lycosa accepts without hesitation any strange pill
which she is, given in exchange for her own; she confuses alien
produce with the produce of her ovaries and her silk-factory.
Those hallowed words, maternal love, were out of place here:  it is
an impetuous, an almost mechanical impulse, wherein real affection
plays no part whatever.  The beautiful Spider of the rock-roses is
no more generously endowed.  When moved from her nest to another of
the same kind, she settles upon it and never stirs from it, even
though the different arrangement of the leafy fence be such as to
warn her that she is not really at home.  Provided that she have
satin under her feet, she does not notice her mistake; she watches
over another's nest with the same vigilance which she might show in
watching over her own.

The Lycosa surpasses her in maternal blindness.  She fastens to her
spinnerets and dangles, by way of a bag of eggs, a ball of cork
polished with my file, a paper pellet, a little ball of thread.  In
order to discover if the Thomisus is capable of a similar error, I
gathered some broken pieces of silk-worm's cocoon into a closed
cone, turning the fragments so as to bring the smoother and more
delicate inner surface outside.  My attempt was unsuccessful.  When
removed from her home and placed on the artificial wallet, the
mother Thomisus obstinately refused to settle there.  Can she be
more clear-sighted than the Lycosa?  Perhaps so.  Let us not be too
extravagant with our praise, however; the imitation of the bag was
a very clumsy one.

The work of laying is finished by the end of May, after which,
lying flat on the ceiling of her nest, the mother never leaves her
guard-room, either by night or day.  Seeing her look so thin and
wrinkled, I imagine that I can please her by bringing her a
provision of Bees, as I was wont to do.  I have misjudged her
needs.  The Bee, hitherto her favourite dish, tempts her no longer.
In vain does the prey buzz close by, an easy capture within the
cage:  the watcher does not shift from her post, takes no notice of
the windfall.  She lives exclusively upon maternal devotion, a
commendable but unsubstantial fare.  And so I see her pining away
from day to day, becoming more and more wrinkled.  What is the
withered thing waiting for, before expiring?  She is waiting for
her children to emerge; the dying creature is still of use to them.

When the Banded Epeira's little ones issue from their balloon, they
have long been orphans.  There is none to come to their assistance;
and they have not the strength to free themselves unaided.  The
balloon has to split automatically and to scatter the youngsters
and their flossy mattress all mixed up together.  The Thomisus'
wallet, sheathed in leaves over the greater part of its surface,
never bursts; nor does the lid rise, so carefully is it sealed
down.  Nevertheless, after the delivery of the brood, we see, at
the edge of the lid, a small, gaping hole, an exit-window.  Who
contrived this window, which was not there at first?

The fabric is too thick and tough to have yielded to the twitches
of the feeble little prisoners.  It was the mother, therefore, who,
feeling her offspring shuffle impatiently under the silken ceiling,
herself made a hole in the bag.  She persists in living for five or
six weeks, despite her shattered health, so as to give a last
helping hand and open the door for her family.  After performing
this duty, she gently lets herself die, hugging her nest and
turning into a shrivelled relic.

When July comes, the little ones emerge.  In view of their
acrobatic habits, I have placed a bundle of slender twigs at the
top of the cage in which they were born.  All of them pass through
the wire gauze and form a group on the summit of the brushwood,
where they swiftly weave a spacious lounge of criss-cross threads.
Here they remain, pretty quietly, for a day or two; then foot-
bridges begin to be flung from one object to the next.  This is the
opportune moment.

I put the bunch laden with beasties on a small table, in the shade,
before the open window.  Soon, the exodus commences, but slowly and
unsteadily.  There are hesitations, retrogressions, perpendicular
falls at the end of a thread, ascents that bring the hanging Spider
up again.  In short much ado for a poor result.

As matters continue to drag, it occurs to me, at eleven o'clock, to
take the bundle of brush-wood swarming with the little Spiders, all
eager to be off, and place it on the window-sill, in the glare of
the sun.  After a few minutes of heat and light, the scene assumes
a very different aspect.  The emigrants run to the top of the
twigs, bustle about actively.  It becomes a bewildering rope-yard,
where thousands of legs are drawing the hemp from the spinnerets.
I do not see the ropes manufactured and sent floating at the mercy
of the air; but I guess their presence.

Three or four Spiders start at a time, each going her own way in
directions independent of her neighbours'.  All are moving upwards,
all are climbing some support, as can be perceived by the nimble
motion of their legs.  Moreover, the road is visible behind the
climber, it is of double thickness, thanks to an added thread.
Then, at a certain height, individual movement ceases.  The tiny
animal soars in space and shines, lit up by the sun.  Softly it
sways, then suddenly takes flight.

What has happened?  There is a slight breeze outside.  The floating
cable has snapped and the creature has gone off, borne on its
parachute.  I see it drifting away, showing, like a spot of light,
against the dark foliage of the near cypresses, some forty feet
distant.  It rises higher, it crosses over the cypress-screen, it
disappears.  Others follow, some higher, some lower, hither and
thither.

But the throng has finished its preparations; the hour has come to
disperse in swarms.  We now see, from the crest of the brushwood, a
continuous spray of starters, who shoot up like microscopic
projectiles and mount in a spreading cluster.  In the end, it is
like the bouquet at the finish of a pyrotechnic display, the sheaf
of rockets fired simultaneously.  The comparison is correct down to
the dazzling light itself.  Flaming in the sun like so many
gleaming points, the little Spiders are the sparks of that living
firework.  What a glorious send-off! What an entrance into the
world!  Clutching its aeronautic thread, the minute creature mounts
in an apotheosis.

Sooner or later, nearer or farther, the fall comes.  To live, we
have to descend, often very low, alas!  The Crested Lark crumbles
the mule-droppings in the road and thus picks up his food, the
oaten grain which he would never find by soaring in the sky, his
throat swollen with song.  We have to descend; the stomach's
inexorable claims demand it.  The Spiderling, therefore, touches
land.  Gravity, tempered by the parachute, is kind to her.

The rest of her story escapes me.  What infinitely tiny Midges does
she capture before possessing the strength to stab her Bee?  What
are the methods, what the wiles of atom contending with atom?  I
know not.  We shall find her again in spring, grown quite large and
crouching among the flowers whence the Bee takes toll.



CHAPTER IX:  THE GARDEN SPIDERS:  BUILDING THE WEB



The fowling-snare is one of man's ingenious villainies.  With
lines, pegs and poles, two large, earth-coloured nets are stretched
upon the ground, one to the right, the other to the left of a bare
surface.  A long cord, pulled, at the right moment, by the fowler,
who hides in a brushwood hut, works them and brings them together
suddenly, like a pair of shutters.

Divided between the two nets are the cages of the decoy-birds--
Linnets and Chaffinches, Greenfinches and Yellowhammers, Buntings
and Ortolans--sharp-eared creatures which, on perceiving the
distant passage of a flock of their own kind, forthwith utter a
short calling note.  One of them, the Sambe, an irresistible
tempter, hops about and flaps his wings in apparent freedom.  A bit
of twine fastens him to his convict's stake.  When, worn with
fatigue and driven desperate by his vain attempts to get away, the
sufferer lies down flat and refuses to do his duty, the fowler is
able to stimulate him without stirring from his hut.  A long string
sets in motion a little lever working on a pivot.  Raised from the
ground by this diabolical contrivance, the bird flies, falls down
and flies up again at each jerk of the cord.

The fowler waits, in the mild sunlight of the autumn morning.
Suddenly, great excitement in the cages.  The Chaffinches chirp
their rallying-cry:

'Pinck!  Pinck!'

There is something happening in the sky.  The Sambe, quick!  They
are coming, the simpletons; they swoop down upon the treacherous
floor.  With a rapid movement, the man in ambush pulls his string.
The nets close and the whole flock is caught.

Man has wild beast's blood in his veins.  The fowler hastens to the
slaughter.  With his thumb, he stifles the beating of the captives'
hearts, staves in their skulls.  The little birds, so many piteous
heads of game, will go to market, strung in dozens on a wire passed
through their nostrils.

For scoundrelly ingenuity the Epeira's net can bear comparison with
the fowler's; it even surpasses it when, on patient study, the main
features of its supreme perfection stand revealed.  What refinement
of art for a mess of Flies!  Nowhere, in the whole animal kingdom,
has the need to eat inspired a more cunning industry.  If the
reader will meditate upon the description that follows, he will
certainly share my admiration.

First of all, we must witness the making of the net; we must see it
constructed and see it again and again, for the plan of such a
complex work can only be grasped in fragments.  To-day, observation
will give us one detail; to-morrow, it will give us a second,
suggesting fresh points of view; as our visits multiply, a new fact
is each time added to the sum total of the acquired data,
confirming those which come before or directing our thoughts along
unsuspected paths.

The snow-ball rolling over the carpet of white grows enormous,
however scanty each fresh layer be.  Even so with truth in
observational science:  it is built up of trifles patiently
gathered together.  And, while the collecting of these trifles
means that the student of Spider industry must not be chary of his
time, at least it involves no distant and speculative research.
The smallest garden contains Epeirae, all accomplished weavers.

In my enclosure, which I have stocked carefully with the most
famous breeds, I have six different species under observation, all
of a useful size, all first-class spinners.  Their names are the
Banded Epeira (Epeira fasciata, WALCK.), the Silky Epeira (E.
sericea, WALCK.), the Angular Epeira (E. angulata, WALCK.), the
Pale-tinted Epeira (E. pallida, OLIV.), the Diadem Epeira, or Cross
Spider (E. diadema, CLERK.), and the Crater Epeira (E. cratera,
WALCK.).

I am able, at the proper hours, all through the fine season, to
question them, to watch them at work, now this one, anon that,
according to the chances of the day.  What I did not see very
plainly yesterday I can see the next day, under better conditions,
and on any of the following days, until the phenomenon under
observation is revealed in all clearness.

Let us go every evening, step by step, from one border of tall
rosemaries to the next.  Should things move too slowly, we will sit
down at the foot of the shrubs, opposite the rope-yard, where the
light falls favourably, and watch with unwearying attention.  Each
trip will be good for a fact that fills some gap in the ideas
already gathered.  To appoint one's self, in this way, an inspector
of Spiders' webs, for many years in succession and for long
seasons, means joining a not overcrowded profession, I admit.
Heaven knows, it does not enable one to put money by!  No matter:
the meditative mind returns from that school fully satisfied.

To describe the separate progress of the work in the case of each
of the six Epeirae mentioned would be a useless repetition:  all
six employ the same methods and weave similar webs, save for
certain details that shall be set forth later.  I will, therefore,
sum up in the aggregate the particulars supplied by one or other of
them.

My subjects, in the first instance, are young and boast but a
slight corporation, very far removed from what it will be in the
late autumn.  The belly, the wallet containing the rope-works,
hardly exceeds a peppercorn in bulk.  This slenderness on the part
of the spinstresses must not prejudice us against their work:
there is no parity between their skill and their years.  The adult
Spiders, with their disgraceful paunches, can do no better.

Moreover, the beginners have one very precious advantage for the
observer:  they work by day, work even in the sun, whereas the old
ones weave only at night, at unseasonable hours.  The first show us
the secrets of their looms without much difficulty; the others
conceal them from us.  Work starts in July, a couple of hours
before sunset.

The spinstresses of my enclosure then leave their daytime hiding-
places, select their posts and begin to spin, one here, another
there.  There are many of them; we can choose where we please.  Let
us stop in front of this one, whom we surprise in the act of laying
the foundations of the structure.  Without any appreciable order,
she runs about the rosemary-hedge, from the tip of one branch to
another within the limits of some eighteen inches.  Gradually, she
puts a thread in position, drawing it from her wire-mill with the
combs attached to her hind-legs.  This preparatory work presents no
appearance of a concerted plan.  The Spider comes and goes
impetuously, as though at random; she goes up, comes down, goes up
again, dives down again and each time strengthens the points of
contact with intricate moorings distributed here and there.  The
result is a scanty and disordered scaffolding.

Is disordered the word?  Perhaps not.  The Epeira's eye, more
experienced in matters of this sort than mine, has recognized the
general lie of the land; and the rope-fabric has been erected
accordingly:  it is very inaccurate in my opinion, but very
suitable for the Spider's designs.  What is it that she really
wants?  A solid frame to contain the network of the web.  The
shapeless structure which she has just built fulfils the desired
conditions:  it marks out a flat, free and perpendicular area.
This is all that is necessary.

The whole work, for that matter, is now soon completed; it is done
all over again, each evening, from top to bottom, for the incidents
of the chase destroy it in a night.  The net is as yet too delicate
to resist the desperate struggles of the captured prey.  On the
other hand, the adults' net, which is formed of stouter threads, is
adapted to last some time; and the Epeira gives it a more
carefully-constructed frame-work, as we shall see elsewhere.

A special thread, the foundation of the real net, is stretched
across the area so capriciously circumscribed.  It is distinguished
from the others by its isolation, its position at a distance from
any twig that might interfere with its swaying length.  It never
fails to have, in the middle, a thick white point, formed of a
little silk cushion.  This is the beacon that marks the centre of
the future edifice, the post that will guide the Epeira and bring
order into the wilderness of twists and turns.

The time has come to weave the hunting-snare.  The Spider starts
from the centre, which bears the white sign-post, and, running
along the transversal thread, hurriedly reaches the circumference,
that is to say, the irregular frame enclosing the free space.
Still with the same sudden movement, she rushes from the
circumference to the centre; she starts again backwards and
forwards, makes for the right, the left, the top, the bottom; she
hoists herself up, dives down, climbs up again, runs down and
always returns to the central landmark by roads that slant in the
most unexpected manner.  Each time, a radius or spoke is laid,
here, there, or elsewhere, in what looks like mad disorder.

The operation is so erratically conducted that it takes the most
unremitting attention to follow it at all.  The Spider reaches the
margin of the area by one of the spokes already placed.  She goes
along this margin for some distance from the point at which she
landed, fixes her thread to the frame and returns to the centre by
the same road which she has just taken.

The thread obtained on the way in a broken line, partly on the
radius and partly on the frame, is too long for the exact distance
between the circumference and the central point.  On returning to
this point, the Spider adjusts her thread, stretches it to the
correct length, fixes it and collects what remains on the central
signpost.  In the case of each radius laid, the surplus is treated
in the same fashion, so that the signpost continues to increase in
size.  It was first a speck; it is now a little pellet, or even a
small cushion of a certain breadth.

We shall see presently what becomes of this cushion whereon the
Spider, that niggardly housewife, lays her saved-up bits of thread;
for the moment, we will note that the Epeira works it up with her
legs after placing each spoke, teazles it with her claws, mats it
into felt with noteworthy diligence.  In so doing, she gives the
spokes a solid common support, something like the hub of our
carriage-wheels.

The eventual regularity of the work suggests that the radii are
spun in the same order in which they figure in the web, each
following immediately upon its next neighbour.  Matters pass in
another manner, which at first looks like disorder, but which is
really a judicious contrivance.  After setting a few spokes in one
direction, the Epeira runs across to the other side to draw some in
the opposite direction.  These sudden changes of course are highly
logical; they show us how proficient the Spider is in the mechanics
of rope-construction.  Were they to succeed one another regularly,
the spokes of one group, having nothing as yet to counteract them,
would distort the work by their straining, would even destroy it
for lack of a stabler support.  Before continuing, it is necessary
to lay a converse group which will maintain the whole by its
resistance.  Any combination of forces acting in one direction must
be forthwith neutralized by another in the opposite direction.
This is what our statics teach us and what the Spider puts into
practice; she is a past mistress of the secrets of rope-building,
without serving an apprenticeship.

One would think that this interrupted and apparently disordered
labour must result in a confused piece of work.  Wrong:  the rays
are equidistant and form a beautifully-regular orb.  Their number
is a characteristic mark of the different species.  The Angular
Epeira places 21 in her web, the Banded Epeira 32, the Silky Epeira
42.  These numbers are not absolutely fixed; but the variation is
very slight.

Now which of us would undertake, off-hand, without much preliminary
experiment and without measuring-instruments, to divide a circle
into a given quantity of sectors of equal width?  The Epeirae,
though weighted with a wallet and tottering on threads shaken by
the wind, effect the delicate division without stopping to think.
They achieve it by a method which seems mad according to our
notions of geometry.  Out of disorder they evolve order.

We must not, however, give them more than their due.  The angles
are only approximately equal; they satisfy the demands of the eye,
but cannot stand the test of strict measurement.  Mathematical
precision would be superfluous here.  No matter, we are amazed at
the result obtained.  How does the Epeira come to succeed with her
difficult problem, so strangely managed?  I am still asking myself
the question.

The laying of the radii is finished.  The Spider takes her place in
the centre, on the little cushion formed of the inaugural sign-post
and the bits of thread left over.  Stationed on this support, she
slowly turns round and round.  She is engaged on a delicate piece
of work.  With an extremely thin thread, she describes from spoke
to spoke, starting from the centre, a spiral line with very close
coils.  The central space thus worked attains, in the adults' webs,
the dimensions of the palm of one's hand; in the younger Spiders'
webs, it is much smaller, but it is never absent.  For reasons
which I will explain in the course of this study, I shall call it,
in future, the 'resting-floor.'

The thread now becomes thicker.  The first could hardly be seen;
the second is plainly visible.  The Spider shifts her position with
great slanting strides, turns a few times, moving farther and
farther from the centre, fixes her line each time to the spoke
which she crosses and at last comes to a stop at the lower edge of
the frame.  She has described a spiral with coils of rapidly-
increasing width.  The average distance between the coils, even in
the structures of the young Epeirae, is one centimetre. {29}

Let us not be misled by the word 'spiral,' which conveys the notion
of a curved line.  All curves are banished from the Spiders' work;
nothing is used but the straight line and its combinations.  All
that is aimed at is a polygonal line drawn in a curve as geometry
understands it.  To this polygonal line, a work destined to
disappear as the real toils are woven, I will give the name of the
'auxiliary spiral.'  Its object is to supply cross-bars, supporting
rungs, especially in the outer zone, where the radii are too
distant from one another to afford a suitable groundwork.  Its
object is also to guide the Epeira in the extremely delicate
business which she is now about to undertake.

But, before that, one last task becomes essential.  The area
occupied by the spokes is very irregular, being marked out by the
supports of the branch, which are infinitely variable.  There are
angular niches which, if skirted too closely, would disturb the
symmetry of the web about to be constructed.  The Epeira needs an
exact space wherein gradually to lay her spiral thread.  Moreover,
she must not leave any gaps through which her prey might find an
outlet.

An expert in these matters, the Spider soon knows the corners that
have to be filled up.  With an alternating movement, first in this
direction, then in that, she lays, upon the support of the radii, a
thread that forms two acute angles at the lateral boundaries of the
faulty part and describes a zigzag line not wholly unlike the
ornament known as the fret.

The sharp corners have now been filled with frets on every side;
the time has come to work at the essential part, the snaring-web
for which all the rest is but a support.  Clinging on the one hand
to the radii, on the other to the chords of the auxiliary spiral,
the Epeira covers the same ground as when laying the spiral, but in
the opposite direction:  formerly, she moved away from the centre;
now she moves towards it and with closer and more numerous circles.
She starts from the base of the auxiliary spiral, near the frame.

What follows is difficult to observe, for the movements are very
quick and spasmodic, consisting of a series of sudden little
rushes, sways and bends that bewilder the eye.  It needs continuous
attention and repeated examination to distinguish the progress of
the work however slightly.

The two hind-legs, the weaving implements, keep going constantly.
Let us name them according to their position on the work-floor.  I
call the leg that faces the centre of the coil, when the animal
moves, the 'inner leg;' the one outside the coil the 'outer leg.'

The latter draws the thread from the spinneret and passes it to the
inner leg, which, with a graceful movement, lays it on the radius
crossed.  At the same time, the first leg measures the distance; it
grips the last coil placed in position and brings within a suitable
range that point of the radius whereto the thread is to be fixed.
As soon as the radius is touched, the thread sticks to it by its
own glue.  There are no slow operations, no knots:  the fixing is
done of itself.

Meanwhile, turning by narrow degrees, the spinstress approaches the
auxiliary chords that have just served as her support.  When, in
the end, these chords become too close, they will have to go; they
would impair the symmetry of the work.  The Spider, therefore,
clutches and holds on to the rungs of a higher row; she picks up,
one by one, as she goes along, those which are of no more use to
her and gathers them into a fine-spun ball at the contact-point of
the next spoke.  Hence arises a series of silky atoms marking the
course of the disappearing spiral.

The light has to fall favourably for us to perceive these specks,
the only remains of the ruined auxiliary thread.  One would take
them for grains of dust, if the faultless regularity of their
distribution did not remind us of the vanished spiral.  They
continue, still visible, until the final collapse of the net.

And the Spider, without a stop of any kind, turns and turns and
turns, drawing nearer to the centre and repeating the operation of
fixing her thread at each spoke which she crosses.  A good half-
hour, an hour even among the full-grown Spiders, is spent on spiral
circles, to the number of about fifty for the web of the Silky
Epeira and thirty for those of the Banded and the Angular Epeira.

At last, at some distance from the centre, on the borders of what I
have called the resting-floor, the Spider abruptly terminates her
spiral when the space would still allow of a certain number of
turns.  We shall see the reason of this sudden stop presently.
Next, the Epeira, no matter which, young or old, hurriedly flings
herself upon the little central cushion, pulls it out and rolls it
into a ball which I expected to see thrown away.  But no:  her
thrifty nature does not permit this waste.  She eats the cushion,
at first an inaugural landmark, then a heap of bits of thread; she
once more melts in the digestive crucible what is no doubt intended
to be restored to the silken treasury.  It is a tough mouthful,
difficult for the stomach to elaborate; still, it is precious and
must not be lost.  The work finishes with the swallowing.  Then and
there, the Spider instals herself, head downwards, at her hunting-
post in the centre of the web.

The operation which we have just seen gives rise to a reflection.
Men are born right-handed.  Thanks to a lack of symmetry that has
never been explained, our right side is stronger and readier in its
movements than our left.  The inequality is especially noticeable
in the two hands.  Our language expresses this supremacy of the
favoured side in the terms dexterity, adroitness and address, all
of which allude to the right hand.

Is the animal, on its side, right-handed, left-handed, or unbiased?
We have had opportunities of showing that the Cricket, the
Grasshopper and many others draw their bow, which is on the right
wing-case, over the sounding apparatus, which is on the left wing-
case.  They are right-handed.

When you and I take an unpremeditated turn, we spin round on our
right heel.  The left side, the weaker, moves on the pivot of the
right, the stronger.  In the same way, nearly all the Molluscs that
have spiral shells roll their coils from left to right.  Among the
numerous species in both land and water fauna, only a very few are
exceptional and turn from right to left.

It would be interesting to try and work out to what extent that
part of the zoological kingdom which boasts a two-sided structure
is divided into right-handed and left-handed animals.  Can
dissymetry, that source of contrasts, be a general rule?  Or are
there neutrals, endowed with equal powers of skill and energy on
both sides?  Yes, there are; and the Spider is one of them.  She
enjoys the very enviable privilege of possessing a left side which
is no less capable than the right.  She is ambidextrous, as witness
the following observations.

When laying her snaring-thread, every Epeira turns in either
direction indifferently, as a close watch will prove.  Reasons
whose secret escapes us determine the direction adopted.  Once this
or the other course is taken, the spinstress does not change it,
even after incidents that sometimes occur to disturb the progress
of the work.  It may happen that a Gnat gets caught in the part
already woven.  The Spider thereupon abruptly interrupts her
labours, hastens up to the prey, binds it and then returns to where
she stopped and continues the spiral in the same order as before.

At the commencement of the work, gyration in one direction being
employed as well as gyration in the other, we see that, when making
her repeated webs, the same Epeira turns now her right side, now
her left to the centre of the coil.  Well, as we have said, it is
always with the inner hind-leg, the leg nearer the centre, that is
to say, in some cases the right and in some cases the left leg,
that she places the thread in position, an exceedingly delicate
operation calling for the display of exquisite skill, because of
the quickness of the action and the need for preserving strictly
equal distances.  Any one seeing this leg working with such extreme
precision, the right leg to-day, the left tomorrow, becomes
convinced that the Epeira is highly ambidextrous.



CHAPTER X:  THE GARDEN SPIDERS:  MY NEIGHBOUR



Age does not modify the Epeira's talent in any essential feature.
As the young worked, so do the old, the richer by a year's
experience.  There are no masters nor apprentices in their guild;
all know their craft from the moment that the first thread is laid.
We have learnt something from the novices:  let us now look into
the matter of their elders and see what additional task the needs
of age impose upon them.

July comes and gives me exactly what I wish for.  While the new
inhabitants are twisting their ropes on the rosemaries in the
enclosure, one evening, by the last gleams of twilight, I discover
a splendid Spider, with a mighty belly, just outside my door.  This
one is a matron; she dates back to last year; her majestic
corpulence, so exceptional at this season, proclaims the fact.  I
know her for the Angular Epeira (Epeira angulata, WALCK.), clad in
grey and girdled with two dark stripes that meet in a point at the
back.  The base of her abdomen swells into a short nipple on either
side.

This neighbour will certainly serve my turn, provided that she do
not work too late at night.  Things bode well:  I catch the buxom
one in the act of laying her first threads.  At this rate my
success need not be won at the expense of sleep.  And, in fact, I
am able, throughout the month of July and the greater part of
August, from eight to ten o'clock in the evening, to watch the
construction of the web, which is more or less ruined nightly by
the incidents of the chase and built up again, next day, when too
seriously dilapidated.

During the two stifling months, when the light fails and a spell of
coolness follows upon the furnace-heat of the day, it is easy for
me, lantern in hand, to watch my neighbour's various operations.
She has taken up her abode, at a convenient height for observation,
between a row of cypress-trees and a clump of laurels, near the
entrance to an alley haunted by Moths.  The spot appears well-
chosen, for the Epeira does not change it throughout the season,
though she renews her net almost every night.

Punctually as darkness falls, our whole family goes and calls upon
her.  Big and little, we stand amazed at her wealth of belly and
her exuberant somersaults in the maze of quivering ropes; we admire
the faultless geometry of the net as it gradually takes shape.  All
agleam in the lantern-light, the work becomes a fairy orb, which
seems woven of moonbeams.

Should I linger, in my anxiety to clear up certain details, the
household, which by this time is in bed, waits for my return before
going to sleep:

'What has she been doing this evening?' I am asked.  'Has she
finished her web?  Has she caught a Moth?'

I describe what has happened.  To-morrow, they will be in a less
hurry to go to bed:  they will want to see everything, to the very
end.  What delightful, simple evenings we have spent looking into
the Spider's workshop!

The journal of the Angular Epeira, written up day by day, teaches
us, first of all, how she obtains the ropes that form the frame-
work of the building.  All day invisible, crouching amid the
cypress-leaves, the Spider, at about eight o'clock in the evening,
solemnly emerges from her retreat and makes for the top of a
branch.  In this exalted position, she sits for some time laying
her plans with due regard to the locality; she consults the
weather, ascertains if the night will be fine.  Then, suddenly,
with her eight legs wide-spread, she lets herself drop straight
down, hanging to the line that issues from her spinnerets.  Just as
the rope-maker obtains the even output of his hemp by walking
backwards, so does the Epeira obtain the discharge of hers by
falling.  It is extracted by the weight of her body.

The descent, however, has not the brute speed which the force of
gravity would give it, if uncontrolled.  It is governed by the
action of the spinnerets, which contract or expand their pores, or
close them entirely, at the faller's pleasure.  And so, with gentle
moderation she pays out this living plumb-line, of which my lantern
clearly shows me the plumb, but not always the line.  The great
squab seems at such times to be sprawling in space, without the
least support.

She comes to an abrupt stop two inches from the ground; the silk-
reel ceases working.  The Spider turns round, clutches the line
which she has just obtained and climbs up by this road, still
spinning.  But, this time, as she is no longer assisted by the
force of gravity, the thread is extracted in another manner.  The
two hind-legs, with a quick alternate action, draw it from the
wallet and let it go.

On returning to her starting-point, at a height of six feet or
more, the Spider is now in possession of a double line, bent into a
loop and floating loosely in a current of air.  She fixes her end
where it suits her and waits until the other end, wafted by the
wind, has fastened its loop to the adjacent twigs.

The desired result may be very slow in coming.  It does not tire
the unfailing patience of the Epeira, but it soon wears out mine.
And it has happened to me sometimes to collaborate with the Spider.
I pick up the floating loop with a straw and lay it on a branch, at
a convenient height.  The foot-bridge erected with my assistance is
considered satisfactory, just as though the wind had placed it.  I
count this collaboration among the good actions standing to my
credit.

Feeling her thread fixed, the Epeira runs along it repeatedly, from
end to end, adding a fibre to it on each journey.  Whether I help
or not, this forms the 'suspension-cable,' the main piece of the
frame-work.  I call it a cable, in spite of its extreme thinness,
because of its structure.  It looks as though it were single, but,
at the two ends, it is seen to divide and spread, tuft-wise, into
numerous constituent parts, which are the product of as many
crossings.  These diverging fibres, with their several contact-
points, increase the steadiness of the two extremities.

The suspension-cable is incomparably stronger than the rest of the
work and lasts for an indefinite time.  The web is generally
shattered after the night's hunting and is nearly always rewoven on
the following evening.  After the removal of the wreckage, it is
made all over again, on the same site, cleared of everything except
the cable from which the new network is to hang.

The laying of this cable is a somewhat difficult matter, because
the success of the enterprise does not depend upon the animal's
industry alone.  It has to wait until a breeze carries the line to
the pier-head in the bushes.  Sometimes, a calm prevails;
sometimes, the thread catches at an unsuitable point.  This
involves great expenditure of time, with no certainty of success.
And so, when once the suspension-cable is in being, well and
solidly placed, the Epeira does not change it, except on critical
occasions.  Every evening, she passes and repasses over it,
strengthening it with fresh threads.

When the Epeira cannot manage a fall of sufficient depth to give
her the double line with its loop to be fixed at a distance, she
employs another method.  She lets herself down and then climbs up
again, as we have already seen; but, this time, the thread ends
suddenly in a filmy hair-pencil, a tuft, whose parts remain
disjoined, just as they come from the spinneret's rose.  Then this
sort of bushy fox's brush is cut short, as though with a pair of
scissors, and the whole thread, when unfurled, doubles its length,
which is now enough for the purpose.  It is fastened by the end
joined to the Spider; the other floats in the air, with its
spreading tuft, which easily tangles in the bushes.  Even so must
the Banded Epeira go to work when she throws her daring suspension-
bridge across a stream.

Once the cable is laid, in this way or in that, the Spider is in
possession of a base that allows her to approach or withdraw from
the leafy piers at will.  From the height of the cable, the upper
boundary of the projected works, she lets herself slip to a slight
depth, varying the points of her fall.  She climbs up again by the
line produced by her descent.  The result of the operation is a
double thread which is unwound while the Spider walks along her big
foot-bridge to the contact-branch, where she fixes the free end of
her thread more or less low down.  In this way, she obtains, to
right and left, a few slanting cross-bars, connecting the cable
with the branches.

These cross-bars, in their turn, support others in ever-changing
directions.  When there are enough of them, the Epeira need no
longer resort to falls in order to extract her threads; she goes
from one cord to the next, always wire-drawing with her hind-legs
and placing her produce in position as she goes.  This results in a
combination of straight lines owning no order, save that they are
kept in one, nearly perpendicular plane.  They mark a very
irregular polygonal area, wherein the web, itself a work of
magnificent regularity, shall presently be woven.

It is unnecessary to go over the construction of the masterpiece
again; the younger Spiders have taught us enough in this respect.
In both cases, we see the same equidistant radii laid, with a
central landmark for a guide; the same auxiliary spiral, the
scaffolding of temporary rungs, soon doomed to disappear; the same
snaring-spiral, with its maze of closely-woven coils.  Let us pass
on:  other details call for our attention.

The laying of the snaring-spiral is an exceedingly delicate
operation, because of the regularity of the work.  I was bent upon
knowing whether, if subjected to the din of unaccustomed sounds,
the Spider would hesitate and blunder.  Does she work
imperturbably?  Or does she need undisturbed quiet?  As it is, I
know that my presence and that of my light hardly trouble her at
all.  The sudden flashes emitted by my lantern have no power to
distract her from her task.  She continues to turn in the light
even as she turned in the dark, neither faster nor slower.  This is
a good omen for the experiment which I have in view.

The first Sunday in August is the feast of the patron saint of the
village, commemorating the Finding of St. Stephen.  This is
Tuesday, the third day of the rejoicings.  There will be fireworks
to-night, at nine o'clock, to conclude the merry-makings.  They
will take place on the high-road outside my door, at a few steps
from the spot where my Spider is working.  The spinstress is busy
upon her great spiral at the very moment when the village big-wigs
arrive with trumpet and drum and small boys carrying torches.

More interested in animal psychology than in pyrotechnical
displays, I watch the Epeira's doings, lantern in hand.  The
hullabaloo of the crowd, the reports of the mortars, the crackle of
Roman candles bursting in the sky, the hiss of the rockets, the
rain of sparks, the sudden flashes of white, red or blue light:
none of this disturbs the worker, who methodically turns and turns
again, just as she does in the peace of ordinary evenings.

Once before, the gun which I fired under the plane-trees failed to
trouble the concert of the Cicadae; to-day, the dazzling light of
the fire-wheels and the splutter of the crackers do not avail to
distract the Spider from her weaving.  And, after all, what
difference would it make to my neighbour if the world fell in!  The
village could be blown up with dynamite, without her losing her
head for such a trifle.  She would calmly go on with her web.

Let us return to the Spider manufacturing her net under the usual
tranquil conditions.  The great spiral has been finished, abruptly,
on the confines of the resting-floor.  The central cushion, a mat
of ends of saved thread, is next pulled up and eaten.  But, before
indulging in this mouthful, which closes the proceedings, two
Spiders, the only two of the order, the Banded and the Silky
Epeira, have still to sign their work.  A broad, white ribbon is
laid, in a thick zigzag, from the centre to the lower edge of the
orb.  Sometimes, but not always, a second band of the same shape
and of lesser length occupies the upper portion, opposite the
first.

I like to look upon these odd flourishes as consolidating-gear.  To
begin with, the young Epeirae never use them.  For the moment,
heedless of the future and lavish of their silk, they remake their
web nightly, even though it be none too much dilapidated and might
well serve again.  A brand-new snare at sunset is the rule with
them.  And there is little need for increased solidity when the
work has to be done again on the morrow.

On the other hand, in the late autumn, the full-grown Spiders,
feeling laying-time at hand, are driven to practise economy, in
view of the great expenditure of silk required for the egg-bag.
Owing to its large size, the net now becomes a costly work which it
were well to use as long as possible, for fear of finding one's
reserves exhausted when the time comes for the expensive
construction of the nest.  For this reason, or for others which
escape me, the Banded and the Silky Epeirae think it wise to
produce durable work and to strengthen their toils with a cross-
ribbon.  The other Epeirae, who are put to less expense in the
fabrication of their maternal wallet--a mere pill--are unacquainted
with the zigzag binder and, like the younger Spiders, reconstruct
their web almost nightly.

My fat neighbour, the Angular Epeira, consulted by the light of a
lantern, shall tell us how the renewal of the net proceeds.  As the
twilight fades, she comes down cautiously from her day-dwelling;
she leaves the foliage of the cypresses for the suspension-cable of
her snare.  Here she stands for some time; then, descending to her
web, she collects the wreckage in great armfuls.  Everything--
spiral, spokes and frame--is raked up with her legs.  One thing
alone is spared and that is the suspension-cable, the sturdy piece
of work that has served as a foundation for the previous buildings
and will serve for the new after receiving a few strengthening
repairs.

The collected ruins form a pill which the Spider consumes with the
same greed that she would show in swallowing her prey.  Nothing
remains.  This is the second instance of the Spiders' supreme
economy of their silk.  We have seen them, after the manufacture of
the net, eating the central guide-post, a modest mouthful; we now
see them gobbling up the whole web, a meal.  Refined and turned
into fluid by the stomach, the materials of the old net will serve
for other purposes.

As goon as the site is thoroughly cleared, the work of the frame
and the net begins on the support of the suspension-cable which was
respected.  Would it not be simpler to restore the old web, which
might serve many times yet, if a few rents were just repaired?  One
would say so; but does the Spider know how to patch her work, as a
thrifty housewife darns her linen?  That is the question.

To mend severed meshes, to replace broken threads, to adjust the
new to the old, in short, to restore the original order by
assembling the wreckage would be a far-reaching feat of prowess, a
very fine proof of gleams of intelligence, capable of performing
rational calculations.  Our menders excel in this class of work.
They have as their guide their sense, which measures the holes,
cuts the new piece to size and fits it into its proper place.  Does
the Spider possess the counterpart of this habit of clear thinking?

People declare as much, without, apparently, looking into the
matter very closely.  They seem able to dispense with the
conscientious observer's scruples, when inflating their bladder of
theory.  They go straight ahead; and that is enough.  As for
ourselves, less greatly daring, we will first enquire; we will see
by experiment if the Spider really knows how to repair her work.

The Angular Epeira, that near neighbour who has already supplied me
with so many documents, has just finished her web, at nine o'clock
in the evening.  It is a splendid night, calm and warm, favourable
to the rounds of the Moths.  All promises good hunting.  At the
moment when, after completing the great spiral, the Epeira is about
to eat the central cushion and settle down upon her resting-floor,
I cut the web in two, diagonally, with a pair of sharp scissors.
The sagging of the spokes, deprived of their counter-agents,
produces an empty space, wide enough for three fingers to pass
through.

The Spider retreats to her cable and looks on without being greatly
frightened.  When I have done, she quietly returns.  She takes her
stand on one of the halves, at the spot which was the centre of the
original orb; but, as her legs find no footing on one side, she
soon realizes that the snare is defective.  Thereupon, two threads
are stretched across the breach, two threads, no more; the legs
that lacked a foothold spread across them; and henceforth the
Epeira moves no more, devoting her attention to the incidents of
the chase.

When I saw those two threads laid, joining the edges of the rent, I
began to hope that I was to witness a mending-process:

'The Spider,' said I to myself, 'will increase the number of those
cross-threads from end to end of the breach; and, though the added
piece may not match the rest of the work, at least it will fill the
gap and the continuous sheet will be of the same use practically as
the regular web.'

The reality did not answer to my expectation.  The spinstress made
no further endeavour all night.  She hunted with her riven net, for
what it was worth; for I found the web next morning in the same
condition wherein I had left it on the night before.  There had
been no mending of any kind.

The two threads stretched across the breach even must not be taken
for an attempt at repairing.  Finding no foothold for her legs on
one side, the Spider went to look into the state of things and, in
so doing, crossed the rent.  In going and returning, she left a
thread, as is the custom with all the Epeirae when walking.  It was
not a deliberate mending, but the mere result of an uneasy change
of place.

Perhaps the subject of my experiment thought it unnecessary to go
to fresh trouble and expense, for the web can serve quite well as
it is, after my scissor-cut:  the two halves together represent the
original snaring-surface.  All that the Spider, seated in a central
position, need do is to find the requisite support for her spread
legs.  The two threads stretched from side to side of the cleft
supply her with this, or nearly.  My mischief did not go far
enough.  Let us devise something better.

Next day, the web is renewed, after the old one has been swallowed.
When the work is done and the Epeira seated motionless at her
central post, I take a straw and, wielding it dexterously, so as to
respect the resting-floor and the spokes, I pull and root up the
spiral, which dangles in tatters.  With its snaring-threads ruined,
the net is useless; no passing Moth would allow herself to be
caught.  Now what does the Epeira do in the face of this disaster?
Nothing at all.  Motionless on her resting-floor, which I have left
intact, she awaits the capture of the game; she awaits it all night
in vain on her impotent web.  In the morning, I find the snare as I
left it.  Necessity, the mother of invention, has not prompted the
Spider to make a slight repair in her ruined toils.

Possibly this is asking too much of her resources.  The silk-glands
may be exhausted after the laying of the great spiral; and to
repeat the same expenditure immediately is out of the question.  I
want a case wherein there could be no appeal to any such
exhaustion.  I obtain it, thanks to my assiduity.

While I am watching the rolling of the spiral, a head of game
rushes fun tilt into the unfinished snare.  The Epeira interrupts
her work, hurries to the giddy-pate, swathes him and takes her fill
of him where he lies.  During the struggle, a section of the web
has torn under the weaver's very eyes.  A great gap endangers the
satisfactory working of the net.  What will the spider do in the
presence of this grievous rent?

Now or never is the time to repair the broken threads:  the
accident has happened this very moment, between the animal's legs;
it is certainly known and, moreover, the rope-works are in full
swing.  This time there is no question of the exhaustion of the
silk-warehouse.

Well, under these conditions, so favourable to darning, the Epeira
does no mending at all.  She flings aside her prey, after taking a
few sips at it, and resumes her spiral at the point where she
interrupted it to attack the Moth.  The torn part remains as it is.
The machine-shuttle in our looms does not revert to the spoiled
fabric; even so with the Spider working at her web.

And this is no case of distraction, of individual carelessness; all
the large spinstresses suffer from a similar incapacity for
patching.  The Banded Epeira and the Silky Epeira are noteworthy in
this respect.  The Angular Epeira remakes her web nearly every
evening; the other two reconstruct theirs only very seldom and use
them even when extremely dilapidated.  They go on hunting with
shapeless rags.  Before they bring themselves to weave a new web,
the old one has to be ruined beyond recognition.  Well, I have
often noted the state of one of these ruins and, the next morning,
I have found it as it was, or even more dilapidated.  Never any
repairs; never; never.  I am sorry, because of the reputation which
our hard-pressed theorists have given her, but the Spider is
absolutely unable to mend her work.  In spite of her thoughtful
appearance, the Epeira is incapable of the modicum of reflexion
required to insert a piece into an accidental gap.

Other Spiders are unacquainted with wide-meshed nets and weave
satins wherein the threads, crossing at random, form a continuous
substance.  Among this number is the House Spider (Tegenaria
domestica, LIN.).  In the corners of our rooms, she stretches wide
webs fixed by angular extensions.  The best-protected nook at one
side contains the owner's secret apartment.  It is a silk tube, a
gallery with a conical opening, whence the Spider, sheltered from
the eye, watches events.  The rest of the fabric, which exceeds our
finest muslins in delicacy, is not, properly speaking, a hunting-
implement:  it is a platform whereon the Spider, attending to the
affairs of her estate, goes her rounds, especially at night.  The
real trap consists of a confusion of lines stretched above the web.

The snare, constructed according to other rules than in the case of
the Epeirae, also works differently.  Here are no viscous threads,
but plain toils, rendered invisible by the very number.  If a Gnat
rush into the perfidious entanglement, he is caught at once; and
the more he struggles the more firmly is he bound.  The snareling
falls on the sheet-web.  Tegenaria hastens up and bites him in the
neck.

Having said this, let us experiment a little.  In the web of the
House Spider, I make a round hole, two fingers wide.  The hole
remains yawning all day long; but next morning it is invariably
closed.  An extremely thin gauze covers the breach, the dark
appearance of which contrasts with the dense whiteness of the
surrounding fabric.  The gauze is so delicate that, to make sure of
its presence, I use a straw rather than my eyes.  The movement of
the web, when this part is touched, proves the presence of an
obstacle.

Here, the matter would appear obvious.  The House Spider has mended
her work during the night; she has put a patch in the torn stuff, a
talent unknown to the Garden Spiders.  It would be greatly to her
credit, if a mere attentive study did not lead to another
conclusion.

The web of the House Spider is, as we were saying, a platform for
watching and exploring; it is also a sheet into which the insects
caught in the overhead rigging fall.  This surface, a domain
subject to unlimited shocks, is never strong enough, especially as
it is exposed to the additional burden of little bits of plaster
loosened from the wall.  The owner is constantly working at it; she
adds a new layer nightly.

Every time that she issues from her tubular retreat or returns to
it, she fixes the thread that hangs behind her upon the road
covered.  As evidence of this work, we have the direction of the
surface-lines, all of which, whether straight or winding, according
to the fancies that guide the Spider's path, converge upon the
entrance of the tube.  Each step taken, beyond a doubt, adds a
filament to the web.

We have here the story of the Processionary of the Pine, {30} whose
habits I have related elsewhere.  When the caterpillars leave the
silk pouch, to go and browse at night, and also when they enter it
again, they never fail to spin a little on the surface of their
nest.  Each expedition adds to the thickness of the wall.

When moving this way or that upon the purse which I have split from
top to bottom with my scissors, the Processionaries upholster the
breach even as they upholster the untouched part, without paying
more attention to it than to the rest of the wall.  Caring nothing
about the accident, they behave in the same way as on a non-gutted
dwelling.  The crevice is closed, in course of time, not
intentionally, but solely by the action of the usual spinning.

We arrive at the same conclusion on the subject of the House
Spider.  Walking about her platform every night, she lays fresh
courses without drawing a distinction between the solid and the
hollow.  She has not deliberately put a patch in the torn texture;
she has simply gone on with her ordinary business.  If it happen
that the hole is eventually closed, this fortunate result is the
outcome not of a special purpose, but of an unvarying method of
work.

Besides, it is evident that, if the Spider really wished to mend
her web, all her endeavours would be concentrated upon the rent.
She would devote to it all the silk at her disposal and obtain in
one sitting a piece very like the rest of the web.  Instead of
that, what do we find?  Almost nothing:  a hardly visible gauze.

The thing is obvious:  the Spider did on that rent what she did
every elsewhere, neither more nor less.  Far from squandering silk
upon it, she saved her silk so as to have enough for the whole web.
The gap will be better mended, little by little, afterwards, as the
sheet is strengthened all over with new layers.  And this will take
long.  Two months later, the window--my work--still shows through
and makes a dark stain against the dead-white of the fabric.

Neither weavers nor spinners, therefore, know how to repair their
work.  Those wonderful manufacturers of silk-stuffs lack the least
glimmer of that sacred lamp, reason, which enables the stupidest of
darning-women to mend the heel of an old stocking.  The office of
inspector of Spiders' webs would have its uses, even if it merely
succeeded in ridding us of a mistaken and mischievous idea.



CHAPTER XI:  THE GARDEN SPIDERS:  THE LIME-SNARE



The spiral network of the Epeirae possesses contrivances of
fearsome cunning.  Let us give our attention by preference to that
of the Banded Epeira or that of the Silky Epeira, both of which can
be observed at early morning in all their freshness.

The thread that forms them is seen with the naked eye to differ
from that of the framework and the spokes.  It glitters in the sun,
looks as though it were knotted and gives the impression of a
chaplet of atoms.  To examine it through the lens on the web itself
is scarcely feasible, because of the shaking of the fabric, which
trembles at the least breath.  By passing a sheet of glass under
the web and lifting it, I take away a few pieces of thread to
study, pieces that remain fixed to the glass in parallel lines.
Lens and microscope can now play their part.

The sight is perfectly astounding.  Those threads, on the
borderland between the visible and the invisible, are very closely
twisted twine, similar to the gold cord of our officers' sword-
knots.  Moreover, they are hollow.  The infinitely slender is a
tube, a channel full of a viscous moisture resembling a strong
solution of gum arabic.  I can see a diaphanous trail of this
moisture trickling through the broken ends.  Under the pressure of
the thin glass slide that covers them on the stage of the
microscope, the twists lengthen out, become crinkled ribbons,
traversed from end to end, through the middle, by a dark streak,
which is the empty container.

The fluid contents must ooze slowly through the side of those
tubular threads, rolled into twisted strings, and thus render the
network sticky.  It is sticky, in fact, and in such a way as to
provoke surprise.  I bring a fine straw flat down upon three or
four rungs of a sector.  However gentle the contact, adhesion is at
once established.  When I lift the straw, the threads come with it
and stretch to twice or three times their length, like a thread of
India-rubber.  At last, when over-taut, they loosen without
breaking and resume their original form.  They lengthen by
unrolling their twist, they shorten by rolling it again; lastly,
they become adhesive by taking the glaze of the gummy moisture
wherewith they are filled.

In short, the spiral thread is a capillary tube finer than any that
our physics will ever know.  It is rolled into a twist so as to
possess an elasticity that allows it, without breaking, to yield to
the tugs of the captured prey; it holds a supply of sticky matter
in reserve in its tube, so as to renew the adhesive properties of
the surface by incessant exudation, as they become impaired by
exposure to the air.  It is simply marvellous.

The Epeira hunts not with springs, but with lime-snares.  And such
lime-snares!  Everything is caught in them, down to the dandelion-
plume that barely brushes against them.  Nevertheless, the Epeira,
who is in constant touch with her web, is not caught in them.  Why?

Let us first of all remember that the Spider has contrived for
herself, in the middle of her trap, a floor in whose construction
the sticky spiral thread plays no part.  We saw how this thread
stops suddenly at some distance from the centre.  There is here,
covering a space which, in the larger webs, is about equal to the
palm of one's hand, a fabric formed of spokes and of the
commencement of the auxiliary spiral, a neutral fabric in which the
exploring straw finds no adhesiveness anywhere.

Here, on this central resting-floor, and here only, the Epeira
takes her stand, waiting whole days for the arrival of the game.
However close, however prolonged her contact with this portion of
the web, she runs no risk of sticking to it, because the gummy
coating is lacking, as is the twisted and tubular structure,
throughout the length of the spokes and throughout the extent of
the auxiliary spiral.  These pieces, together with the rest of the
framework, are made of plain, straight, solid thread.

But, when a victim is caught, sometimes right at the edge of the
web, the Spider has to rush up quickly, to bind it and overcome its
attempts to free itself.  She is walking then upon her network; and
I do not find that she suffers the least inconvenience.  The lime-
threads are not even lifted by the movements of her legs.

In my boyhood, when a troop of us would go, on Thursdays, {31} to
try and catch a Goldfinch in the hemp-fields, we used, before
covering the twigs with glue, to grease our fingers with a few
drops of oil, lest we should get them caught in the sticky matter.
Does the Epeira know the secret of fatty substances?  Let us try.

I rub my exploring straw with slightly oiled paper.  When applied
to the spiral thread of the web, it now no longer sticks to it.
The principle is discovered.  I pull out the leg of a live Epeira.
Brought just as it is into contact with the lime-threads, it does
not stick to them any more than to the neutral cords, whether
spokes or parts of the framework.  We were entitled to expect this,
judging by the Spider's general immunity.

But here is something that wholly alters the result.  I put the leg
to soak for a quarter of an hour in disulphide of carbon, the best
solvent of fatty matters.  I wash it carefully with a brush dipped
in the same fluid.  When this washing is finished, the leg sticks
to the snaring-thread quite easily and adheres to it just as well
as anything else would, the unoiled straw, for instance.

Did I guess aright when I judged that it was a fatty substance that
preserved the Epeira from the snares of her sticky Catherine-wheel?
The action of the carbon disulphide seems to say yes.  Besides,
there is no reason why a substance of this kind, which plays so
frequent a part in animal economy, should not coat the Spider very
slightly by the mere act of perspiration.  We used to rub our
fingers with a little oil before handling the twigs in which the
Goldfinch was to be caught; even so the Epeira varnishes herself
with a special sweat, to operate on any part of her web without
fear of the lime-threads.

However, an unduly protracted stay on the sticky threads would have
its drawbacks.  In the long run, continual contact with those
threads might produce a certain adhesion and inconvenience the
Spider, who must preserve all her agility in order to rush upon the
prey before it can release itself.  For this reason, gummy threads
are never used in building the post of interminable waiting.

It is only on her resting-floor that the Epeira sits, motionless
and with her eight legs outspread, ready to mark the least quiver
in the net.  It is here, again, that she takes her meals, often
long-drawn-out, when the joint is a substantial one; it is hither
that, after trussing and nibbling it, she drags her prey at the end
of a thread, to consume it at her ease on a non-viscous mat.  As a
hunting-post and refectory, the Epeira has contrived a central
space, free from glue.

As for the glue itself, it is hardly possible to study its chemical
properties, because the quantity is so slight.  The microscope
shows it trickling from the broken threads in the form of a
transparent and more or less granular streak.  The following
experiment will tell us more about it.

With a sheet of glass passed across the web, I gather a series of
lime-threads which remain fixed in parallel lines.  I cover this
sheet with a bell-jar standing in a depth of water.  Soon, in this
atmosphere saturated with humidity, the threads become enveloped in
a watery sheath, which gradually increases and begins to flow.  The
twisted shape has by this time disappeared; and the channel of the
thread reveals a chaplet of translucent orbs, that is to say, a
series of extremely fine drops.

In twenty-four hours, the threads have lost their contents and are
reduced to almost invisible streaks.  If I then lay a drop of water
on the glass, I get a sticky solution, similar to that which a
particle of gum arabic might yield.  The conclusion is evident:
the Epeira's glue is a substance that absorbs moisture freely.  In
an atmosphere with a high degree of humidity, it becomes saturated
and percolates by sweating through the side of the tubular threads.

These data explain certain facts relating to the work of the net.
The full-grown Banded and Silky Epeirae weave at very early hours,
long before dawn.  Should the air turn misty, they sometimes leave
that part of the task unfinished:  they build the general
framework, they lay the spokes, they even draw the auxiliary
spiral, for all these parts are unaffected by excess of moisture;
but they are very careful not to work at the lime-threads, which,
if soaked by the fog, would dissolve into sticky shreds and lose
their efficacy by being wetted.  The net that was started will be
finished to-morrow, if the atmosphere be favourable.

While the highly-absorbent character of the snaring-thread has its
drawbacks, it also has compensating advantages.  Both Epeirae, when
hunting by day, affect those hot places, exposed to the fierce rays
of the sun, wherein the Crickets delight.  In the torrid heats of
the dog-days, therefore, the lime-threads, but for special
provisions, would be liable to dry up, to shrivel into stiff and
lifeless filaments.  But the very opposite happens.  At the most
scorching times of the day, they continue supple, elastic and more
and more adhesive.

How is this brought about?  By their very powers of absorption.
The moisture of which the air is never deprived penetrates them
slowly; it dilutes the thick contents of their tubes to the
requisite degree and causes it to ooze through, as and when the
earlier stickiness decreases.  What bird-catcher could vie with the
Garden Spider in the art of laying lime-snares?  And all this
industry and cunning for the capture of a Moth!

Then, too, what a passion for production!  Knowing the diameter of
the orb and the number of coils, we can easily calculate the total
length of the sticky spiral.  We find that, in one sitting, each
time that she remakes her web, the Angular Epeira produces some
twenty yards of gummy thread.  The more skilful Silky Epeira
produces thirty.  Well, during two months, the Angular Epeira, my
neighbour, renewed her snare nearly every evening.  During that
period, she manufactured something like three-quarters of a mile of
this tubular thread, rolled into a tight twist and bulging with
glue.

I should like an anatomist endowed with better implements than mine
and with less tired eyesight to explain to us the work of the
marvellous rope-yard.  How is the silky matter moulded into a
capillary tube?  How is this tube filled with glue and tightly
twisted?  And how does this same wire-mill also turn out plain
threads, wrought first into a framework and then into muslin and
satin; next, a russet foam, such as fills the wallet of the Banded
Epeira; next, the black stripes stretched in meridian curves on
that same wallet?  What a number of products to come from that
curious factory, a Spider's belly!  I behold the results, but fail
to understand the working of the machine.  I leave the problem to
the masters of the microtome and the scalpel.



CHAPTER XII:  THE GARDEN SPIDERS:  THE TELEGRAPH-WIRE



Of the six Garden Spiders that form the object of my observations,
two only, the Banded and the silky Epeira, remain constantly in
their webs, even under the blinding rays of a fierce sun.  The
others, as a rule, do not show themselves until nightfall.  At some
distance from the net, they have a rough and ready retreat in the
brambles, an ambush made of a few leaves held together by stretched
threads.  It is here that, for the most part, they remain in the
daytime, motionless and sunk in meditation.

But the shrill light that vexes them is the joy of the fields.  At
such times, the Locust hops more nimbly than ever, more gaily skims
the Dragon-fly.  Besides, the limy web, despite the rents suffered
during the night, is still in serviceable condition.  If some
giddy-pate allow himself to be caught, will the Spider, at the
distance whereto she has retired, be unable to take advantage of
the windfall?  Never fear.  She arrives in a flash.  How is she
apprised?  Let us explain the matter.

The alarm is given by the vibration of the web, much more than by
the sight of the captured object.  A very simple experiment will
prove this.  I lay upon a Banded Epeira's lime-threads a Locust
that second asphyxiated with carbon disulphide.  The carcass is
placed in front, or behind, or at either side of the Spider, who
sits moveless in the centre of the net.  If the test is to be
applied to a species with a daytime hiding-place amid the foliage,
the dead Locust is laid on the web, more or less near the centre,
no matter how.

In both cases, nothing happens at first.  The Epeira remains in her
motionless attitude, even when the morsel is at a short distance in
front of her.  She is indifferent to the presence of the game, does
not seem to perceive it, so much so that she ends by wearing out my
patience.  Then, with a long straw, which enables me to conceal
myself slightly, I set the dead insect trembling.

That is quite enough.  The Banded Epeira and the Silky Epeira
hasten to the central floor; the others come down from the branch;
all go to the Locust, swathe him with tape, treat him, in short, as
they would treat a live prey captured under normal conditions.  It
took the shaking of the web to decide them to attack.

Perhaps the grey colour of the Locust is not sufficiently
conspicuous to attract attention by itself.  Then let us try red,
the brightest colour to our retina and probably also to the
Spiders'.  None of the game hunted by the Epeirae being clad in
scarlet, I make a small bundle out of red wool, a bait of the size
of a Locust.  I glue it to the web.

My stratagem succeeds.  As long as the parcel is stationary, the
Spider is not roused; but, the moment it trembles, stirred by my
straw, she runs up eagerly.

There are silly ones who just touch the thing with their legs and,
without further enquiries, swathe it in silk after the manner of
the usual game.  They even go so far as to dig their fangs into the
bait, following the rule of the preliminary poisoning.  Then and
then only the mistake is recognized and the tricked Spider retires
and does not come back, unless it be long afterwards, when she
flings the cumbersome object out of the web.

There are also clever ones.  Like the others, these hasten to the
red-woollen lure, which my straw insidiously keeps moving; they
come from their tent among the leaves as readily as from the centre
of the web; they explore it with their palpi and their legs; but,
soon perceiving that the thing is valueless, they are careful not
to spend their silk on useless bonds.  My quivering bait does not
deceive them.  It is flung out after a brief inspection.

Still, the clever ones, like the silly ones, run even from a
distance, from their leafy ambush.  How do they know?  Certainly
not by sight.  Before recognizing their mistake, they have to hold
the object between their legs and even to nibble at it a little.
They are extremely short-sighted.  At a hand's-breadth's distance,
the lifeless prey, unable to shake the web, remains unperceived.
Besides, in many cases, the hunting takes place in the dense
darkness of the night, when sight, even if it were good, would not
avail.

If the eyes are insufficient guides, even close at hand, how will
it be when the prey has to be spied from afar! In that case, an
intelligence-apparatus for long-distance work becomes
indispensable.  We have no difficulty in detecting the apparatus.

Let us look attentively behind the web of any Epeira with a daytime
hiding-place:  we shall see a thread that starts from the centre of
the network, ascends in a slanting line outside the plane of the
web and ends at the ambush where the Spider lurks all day.  Except
at the central point, there is no connection between this thread
and the rest of the work, no interweaving with the scaffolding-
threads.  Free of impediment, the line runs straight from the
centre of the net to the ambush-tent.  Its length averages twenty-
two inches.  The Angular Epeira, settled high up in the trees, has
shown me some as long as eight or nine feet.

There is no doubt that this slanting line is a foot-bridge which
allows the Spider to repair hurriedly to the web, when summoned by
urgent business, and then, when her round is finished, to return to
her hut.  In fact, it is the road which I see her follow, in going
and coming.  But is that all?  No; for, if the Epeira had no aim in
view but a means of rapid transit between her tent and the net, the
foot-bridge would be fastened to the upper edge of the web.  The
journey would be shorter and the slope less steep.

Why, moreover, does this line always start in the centre of the
sticky network and nowhere else?  Because that is the point where
the spokes meet and, therefore, the common centre of vibration.
Anything that moves upon the web sets it shaking.  All then that is
needed is a thread issuing from this central point to convey to a
distance the news of a prey struggling in some part or other of the
net.  The slanting cord, extending outside the plane of the web, is
more than a foot-bridge:  it is, above all, a signalling-apparatus,
a telegraph-wire.

Let us try experiment.  I place a Locust on the network.  Caught in
the sticky toils, he plunges about.  Forthwith, the Spider issues
impetuously from her hut, comes down the foot-bridge, makes a rush
for the Locust, wraps him up and operates on him according to rule.
Soon after, she hoists him, fastened by a line to her spinneret,
and drags him to her hiding-place, where a long banquet will be
held.  So far, nothing new:  things happen as usual.

I leave the Spider to mind her own affairs for some days, before I
interfere with her.  I again propose to give her a Locust; but,
this time, I first cut the signalling-thread with a touch of the
scissors, without shaking any part of the edifice.  The game is
then laid on the web.  Complete success:  the entangled insect
struggles, sets the net quivering; the Spider, on her side, does
not stir, as though heedless of events.

The idea might occur to one that, in this business, the Epeira
stays motionless in her cabin since she is prevented from hurrying
down, because the foot-bridge is broken.  Let us undeceive
ourselves:  for one road open to her there are a hundred, all ready
to bring her to the place where her presence is now required.  The
network is fastened to the branches by a host of lines, all of them
very easy to cross.  Well, the Epeira embarks upon none of them,
but remains moveless and self-absorbed.

Why?  Because her telegraph, being out of order, no longer tells
her of the shaking of the web.  The captured prey is too far off
for her to see it; she is all unwitting.  A good hour passes, with
the Locust still kicking, the Spider impassive, myself watching.
Nevertheless, in the end, the Epeira wakes up:  no longer feeling
the signalling-thread, broken by my scissors, as taut as usual
under her legs, she comes to look into the state of things.  The
web is reached, without the least difficulty, by one of the lines
of the framework, the first that offers.  The Locust is then
perceived and forthwith enswathed, after which the signalling-
thread is remade, taking the place of the one which I have broken.
Along this road the Spider goes home, dragging her prey behind her.

My neighbour, the mighty Angular Epeira, with her telegraph-wire
nine feet long, has even better things in store for me.  One
morning, I find her web, which is now deserted, almost intact, a
proof that the night's hunting has not been good.  The animal must
be hungry.  With a piece of game for a bait, I hope to bring her
down from her lofty retreat.

I entangle in the web a rare morsel, a Dragon-fly, who struggles
desperately and sets the whole net a-shaking.  The other, up above,
leaves her lurking-place amid the cypress-foliage, strides swiftly
down along her telegraph-wire, comes to the Dragon-fly, trusses her
and at once climbs home again by the same road, with her prize
dangling at her heels by a thread.  The final sacrifice will take
place in the quiet of the leafy sanctuary.

A few days later, I renew my experiment under the same conditions,
but, this time, I first cut the signalling-thread.  In vain I
select a large Dragon-fly, a very restless prisoner; in vain I
exert my patience:  the Spider does not come down all day.  Her
telegraph being broken, she receives no notice of what is happening
nine feet below.  The entangled morsel remains where it lies, not
despised, but unknown.  At nightfall, the Epeira leaves her cabin,
passes over the ruins of her web, finds the Dragon-fly and eats her
on the spot, after which the net is renewed.

One of the Epeirae whom I have had the opportunity of examining
simplifies the system, while retaining the essential mechanism of a
transmission-thread.  This is the Crater Epeira (Epeira cratera,
WALCK.), a species seen in spring, at which time she indulges
especially in the chase of the Domestic Bee, upon the flowering
rosemaries.  At the leafy end of a branch, she builds a sort of
silken shell, the shape and size of an acorn-cup.  This is where
she sits, with her paunch contained in the round cavity and her
fore-legs resting on the ledge, ready to leap.  The lazy creature
loves this position and rarely stations herself head downwards on
the web, as do the others.  Cosily ensconced in the hollow of her
cup, she awaits the approaching game.

Her web, which is vertical, as is the rule among the Epeirae, is of
a fair size and always very near the bowl wherein the Spider takes
her ease.  Moreover, it touches the bowl by means of an angular
extension; and the angle always contains one spoke which the
Epeira, seated, so to speak, in her crater, has constantly under
her legs.  This spoke, springing from the common focus of the
vibrations from all parts of the network, is eminently fitted to
keep the Spider informed of whatsoever happens.  It has a double
office:  it forms part of the Catherine-wheel supporting the lime-
threads and it warns the Epeira by its vibrations.  A special
thread is here superfluous.

The other snarers, on the contrary, who occupy a distant retreat by
day, cannot do without a private wire that keeps them in permanent
communication with the deserted web.  All of them have one, in
point of fact, but only when age comes, age prone to rest and to
long slumbers.  In their youth, the Epeirae, who are then very
wide-awake, know nothing of the art of telegraphy.  Besides, their
web, a short-lived work whereof hardly a trace remains on the
morrow, does not allow of this kind of industry.  It is no use
going to the expense of a signalling-apparatus for a ruined snare
wherein nothing can now be caught.  Only the old Spiders,
meditating or dozing in their green tent, are warned from afar, by
telegraph, of what takes place on the web.

To save herself from keeping a close watch that would degenerate
into drudgery and to remain alive to events even when resting, with
her back turned on the net, the ambushed Spider always has her foot
upon the telegraph-wire.  Of my observations on this subject, let
me relate the following, which will be sufficient for our purpose.

An Angular Epeira, with a remarkably fine belly, has spun her web
between two laurestine-shrubs, covering a width of nearly a yard.
The sun beats upon the snare, which is abandoned long before dawn.
The Spider is in her day manor, a resort easily discovered by
following the telegraph-wire.  It is a vaulted chamber of dead
leaves, joined together with a few bits of silk.  The refuge is
deep:  the Spider disappears in it entirely, all but her rounded
hind-quarters, which bar the entrance to the donjon.

With her front half plunged into the back of her hut, the Epeira
certainly cannot see her web.  Even if she had good sight, instead
of being purblind, her position could not possibly allow her to
keep the prey in view.  Does she give up hunting during this
period, of bright sunlight?  Not at all.  Look again.

Wonderful!  One of her hind-legs is stretched outside the leafy
cabin; and the signalling-thread ends just at the tip of that leg.
Whoso has not seen the Epeira in this attitude, with her hand, so
to speak, on the telegraph-receiver, knows nothing of one of the
most curious instances of animal cleverness.  Let any game appear
upon the scene; and the slumberer, forthwith aroused by means of
the leg receiving the vibrations, hastens up.  A Locust whom I
myself lay on the web procures her this agreeable shock and what
follows.  If she is satisfied with her bag, I am still more
satisfied with what I have learnt.

The occasion is too good not to find out, under better conditions
as regards approach, what the inhabitant of the cypress-trees has
already shown me.  The next morning, I cut the telegraph-wire, this
time as long as one's arm and held, like yesterday, by one of the
hind-legs stretched outside the cabin.  I then place on the web a
double prey, a Dragon-fly and a Locust.  The latter kicks out with
his long, spurred shanks; the other flutters her wings.  The web is
tossed about to such an extent that a number of leaves, just beside
the Epeira's nest, move, shaken by the threads of the framework
affixed to them.

And this vibration, though so close at hand, does not rouse the
Spider in the least, does not make her even turn round to enquire
what is going on.  The moment that her signalling-thread ceases to
work, she knows nothing of passing events.  All day long, she
remains without stirring.  In the evening, at eight o'clock, she
sallies forth to weave the new web and at last finds the rich
windfall whereof she was hitherto unaware.

One word more.  The web is often shaken by the wind.  The different
parts of the framework, tossed and teased by the eddying air-
currents, cannot fail to transmit their vibration to the
signalling-thread.  Nevertheless, the Spider does not quit her hut
and remains indifferent to the commotion prevailing in the net.
Her line, therefore, is something better than a bell-rope that
pulls and communicates the impulse given:  it is a telephone
capable, like our own, of transmitting infinitesimal waves of
sound.  Clutching her telephone-wire with a toe, the Spider listens
with her leg; she perceives the innermost vibrations; she
distinguishes between the vibration proceeding from a prisoner and
the mere shaking caused by the wind.



CHAPTER XIII:  THE GARDEN SPIDERS:  PAIRING AND HUNTING



Notwithstanding the importance of the subject, I shall not enlarge
upon the nuptials of the Epeirae, grim natures whose loves easily
turn to tragedy in the mystery of the night.  I have but once been
present at the pairing and for this curious experience I must thank
my lucky star and my fat neighbour, the Angular Epeira, whom I
visit so often by lantern-light.  Here you have it.

It is the first week of August, at about nine o'clock in the
evening, under a perfect sky, in calm, hot weather.  The Spider has
not yet constructed her web and is sitting motionless on her
suspension-cable.  The fact that she should be slacking like this,
at a time when her building-operations ought to be in full swing,
naturally astonishes me.  Can something unusual be afoot?

Even so.  I see hastening up from the neighbouring bushes and
embarking on the cable a male, a dwarf, who is coming, the whipper-
snapper, to pay his respects to the portly giantess.  How has he,
in his distant corner, heard of the presence of the nymph ripe for
marriage?  Among the Spiders, these things are learnt in the
silence of the night, without a summons, without a signal, none
knows how.

Once, the Great Peacock, {32} apprised by the magic effluvia, used
to come from miles around to visit the recluse in her bell-jar in
my study.  The dwarf of this evening, that other nocturnal pilgrim,
crosses the intricate tangle of the branches without a mistake and
makes straight for the rope-walker.  He has as his guide the
infallible compass that brings every Jack and his Jill together.

He climbs the slope of the suspension-cord; he advances
circumspectly, step by step.  He stops some distance away,
irresolute.  Shall he go closer?  Is this the right moment?  No.
The other lifts a limb and the scared visitor hurries down again.
Recovering from his fright, he climbs up once more, draws a little
nearer.  More sudden flights, followed by fresh approaches, each
time nigher than before.  This restless running to and fro is the
declaration of the enamoured swain.

Perseverance spells success.  The pair are now face to face, she
motionless and grave, he all excitement.  With the tip of his leg,
he ventures to touch the plump wench.  He has gone too far, daring
youth that he is!  Panic-stricken, he takes a header, hanging by
his safety-line.  It is only for a moment, however.  Up he comes
again.  He has learnt, from certain symptoms, that we are at last
yielding to his blandishments.

With his legs and especially with his palpi, or feelers, he teases
the buxom gossip, who answers with curious skips and bounds.
Gripping a thread with her front tarsi, or fingers, she turns, one
after the other, a number of back somersaults, like those of an
acrobat on the trapeze.  Having done this, she presents the under-
part of her paunch to the dwarf and allows him to fumble at it a
little with his feelers.  Nothing more:  it is done.

The object of the expedition is attained.  The whipper-snapper
makes off at full speed, as though he had the Furies at his heels.
If he remained, he would presumably be eaten.  These exercises on
the tight-rope are not repeated.  I kept watch in vain on the
following evenings:  I never saw the fellow again.

When he is gone, the bride descends from the cable, spins her web
and assumes the hunting-attitude.  We must eat to have silk, we
must have silk to eat and especially to weave the expensive cocoon
of the family.  There is therefore no rest, not even after the
excitement of being married.

The Epeirae are monuments of patience in their lime-snare.  With
her head down and her eight legs wide-spread, the Spider occupies
the centre of the web, the receiving-point of the information sent
along the spokes.  If anywhere, behind or before, a vibration
occur, the sign of a capture, the Epeira knows about it, even
without the aid of sight.  She hastens up at once.

Until then, not a movement:  one would think that the animal was
hypnotized by her watching.  At most, on the appearance of anything
suspicious, she begins shaking her nest.  This is her way of
inspiring the intruder with awe.  If I myself wish to provoke the
singular alarm, I have but to tease the Epeira with a bit of straw.
You cannot have a swing without an impulse of some sort.  The
terror-stricken Spider, who wishes to strike terror into others,
has hit upon something much better.  With nothing to push her, she
swings with her floor of ropes.  There is no effort, no visible
exertion.  Not a single part of the animal moves; and yet
everything trembles.  Violent shaking proceeds from apparent
inertia.  Rest causes commotion.

When calm is restored, she resumes her attitude, ceaselessly
pondering the harsh problem of life:

'Shall I dine to-day, or not?'

Certain privileged beings, exempt from those anxieties, have food
in abundance and need not struggle to obtain it.  Such is the
Gentle, who swims blissfully in the broth of the putrefying adder.
Others--and, by a strange irony of fate, these are generally the
most gifted--only manage to eat by dint of craft and patience.

You are of their company, O my industrious Epeirae!  So that you
may dine, you spend your treasures of patience nightly; and often
without result.  I sympathize with your woes, for I, who am as
concerned as you about my daily bread, I also doggedly spread my
net, the net for catching ideas, a more elusive and less
substantial prize than the Moth.  Let us not lose heart.  The best
part of life is not in the present, still less in the past; it lies
in the future, the domain of hope.  Let us wait.

All day long, the sky, of a uniform grey, has appeared to be
brewing a storm.  In spite of the threatened downpour, my
neighbour, who is a shrewd weather-prophet, has come out of the
cypress-tree and begun to renew her web at the regular hour.  Her
forecast is correct:  it will be a fine night.  See, the steaming-
pan of the clouds splits open; and, through the apertures, the moon
peeps, inquisitively.  I too, lantern in hand, am peeping.  A gust
of wind from the north clears the realms on high; the sky becomes
magnificent; perfect calm reigns below.  The Moths begin their
nightly rounds.  Good!  One is caught, a mighty fine one.  The
Spider will dine to-day.

What happens next, in an uncertain light, does not lend itself to
accurate observation.  It is better to turn to those Garden Spiders
who never leave their web and who hunt mainly in the daytime.  The
Banded and the Silky Epeira, both of whom live on the rosemaries in
the enclosure, shall show us in broad day-light the innermost
details of the tragedy.

I myself place on the lime-snare a victim of my selecting.  Its six
legs are caught without more ado.  If the insect raises one of its
tarsi and pulls towards itself, the treacherous thread follows,
unwinds slightly and, without letting go or breaking, yields to the
captive's desperate jerks.  Any limb released only tangles the
others still more and is speedily recaptured by the sticky matter.
There is no means of escape, except by smashing the trap with a
sudden effort whereof even powerful insects are not always capable.

Warned by the shaking of the net, the Epeira hastens up; she turns
round about the quarry; she inspects it at a distance, so as to
ascertain the extent of the danger before attacking.  The strength
of the snareling will decide the plan of campaign.  Let us first
suppose the usual case, that of an average head of game, a Moth or
Fly of some sort.  Facing her prisoner, the Spider contracts her
abdomen slightly and touches the insect for a moment with the end
of her spinnerets; then, with her front tarsi, she sets her victim
spinning.  The Squirrel, in the moving cylinder of his cage, does
not display a more graceful or nimbler dexterity.  A cross-bar of
the sticky spiral serves as an axis for the tiny machine, which
turns, turns swiftly, like a spit.  It is a treat to the eyes to
see it revolve.

What is the object of this circular motion?  See, the brief contact
of the spinnerets has given a starting-point for a thread, which
the Spider must now draw from her silk-warehouse and gradually roll
around the captive, so as to swathe him in a winding-sheet which
will overpower any effort made.  It is the exact process employed
in our wire-mills:  a motor-driven spool revolves and, by its
action, draws the wire through the narrow eyelet of a steel plate,
making it of the fineness required, and, with the same movement,
winds it round and round its collar.

Even so with the Epeira's work.  The Spider's front tarsi are the
motor; the revolving spool is the captured insect; the steel eyelet
is the aperture of the spinnerets.  To bind the subject with
precision and dispatch nothing could be better than this
inexpensive and highly-effective method.

Less frequently, a second process is employed.  With a quick
movement, the Spider herself turns round about the motionless
insect, crossing the web first at the top and then at the bottom
and gradually placing the fastenings of her line.  The great
elasticity of the lime-threads allows the Epeira to fling herself
time after time right into the web and to pass through it without
damaging the net.

Let us now suppose the case of some dangerous game:  a Praying
Mantis, for instance, brandishing her lethal limbs, each hooked and
fitted with a double saw; an angry Hornet, darting her awful sting;
a sturdy Beetle, invincible under his horny armour.  These are
exceptional morsels, hardly ever known to the Epeirae.  Will they
be accepted, if supplied by my stratagems?

They are, but not without caution.  The game is seen to be perilous
of approach and the Spider turns her back upon it, instead of
facing it; she trains her rope-cannon upon it.  Quickly, the hind-
legs draw from the spinnerets something much better than single
cords.  The whole silk-battery works at one and the same time,
firing a regular volley of ribbons and sheets, which a wide
movement of the legs spreads fan-wise and flings over the entangled
prisoner.  Guarding against sudden starts, the Epeira casts her
armfuls of bands on the front-and hind-parts, over the legs and
over the wings, here, there and everywhere, extravagantly.  The
most fiery prey is promptly mastered under this avalanche.  In
vain, the Mantis tries to open her saw-toothed arm-guards; in vain,
the Hornet makes play with her dagger; in vain, the Beetle stiffens
his legs and arches his back:  a fresh wave of threads swoops down
and paralyses every effort.

These lavished, far-flung ribbons threaten to exhaust the factory;
it would be much more economical to resort to the method of the
spool; but, to turn the machine, the Spider would have to go up to
it and work it with her leg.  This is too risky; and hence the
continuous spray of silk, at a safe distance.  When all is used up,
there is more to come.

Still, the Epeira seems concerned at this excessive outlay.  When
circumstances permit, she gladly returns to the mechanism of the
revolving spool.  I saw her practise this abrupt change of tactics
on a big Beetle, with a smooth, plump body, which lent itself
admirably to the rotary process.  After depriving the beast of all
power of movement, she went up to it and turned her corpulent
victim as she would have done with a medium-sized Moth.

But with the Praying Mantis, sticking out her long legs and her
spreading wings, rotation is no longer feasible.  Then, until the
quarry is thoroughly subdued, the spray of bandages goes on
continuously, even to the point of drying up the silk-glands.  A
capture of this kind is ruinous.  It is true that, except when I
interfered, I have never seen the Spider tackle that formidable
provender.

Be it feeble or strong, the game is now neatly trussed, by one of
the two methods.  The next move never varies.  The bound insect is
bitten, without persistency and without any wound that shows.  The
Spider next retires and allows the bite to act, which it soon does.
She then returns.

If the victim be small, a Clothes-moth, for instance, it is
consumed on the spot, at the place where it was captured.  But, for
a prize of some importance, on which she hopes to feast for many an
hour, sometimes for many a day, the Spider needs a sequestered
dining-room, where there is naught to fear from the stickiness of
the network.  Before going to it, she first makes her prey turn in
the converse direction to that of the original rotation.  Her
object is to free the nearest spokes, which supplied pivots for the
machinery.  They are essential factors which it behoves her to keep
intact, if need be by sacrificing a few crossbars.

It is done; the twisted ends are put back into position.  The well-
trussed game is at last removed from the web and fastened on behind
with a thread.  The Spider then marches in front and the load is
trundled across the web and hoisted to the resting-floor, which is
both an inspection-post and a dining-hall.  When the Spider is of a
species that shuns the light and possesses a telegraph-line, she
mounts to her daytime hiding-place along this line, with the game
bumping against her heels.

While she is refreshing herself, let us enquire into the effects of
the little bite previously administered to the silk-swathed
captive.  Does the Spider kill the patient with a view to avoiding
unseasonable jerks, protests so disagreeable at dinner-time?
Several reasons make me doubt it.  In the first place, the attack
is so much veiled as to have all the appearance of a mere kiss.
Besides, it is made anywhere, at the first spot that offers.  The
expert slayers {33} employ methods of the highest precision:  they
give a stab in the neck, or under the throat; they wound the
cervical nerve-centres, the seat of energy.  The paralyzers, those
accomplished anatomists, poison the motor nerve-centres, of which
they know the number and position.  The Epeira possesses none of
this fearsome knowledge.  She inserts her fangs at random, as the
Bee does her sting.  She does not select one spot rather than
another; she bites indifferently at whatever comes within reach.
This being so, her poison would have to possess unparalleled
virulence to produce a corpse-like inertia no matter which the
point attacked.  I can scarcely believe in instantaneous death
resulting from the bite, especially in the case of insects, with
their highly-resistant organisms.

Besides, is it really a corpse that the Epeira wants, she who feeds
on blood much more than on flesh?  It were to her advantage to suck
a live body, wherein the flow of the liquids, set in movement by
the pulsation of the dorsal vessel, that rudimentary heart of
insects, must act more freely than in a lifeless body, with its
stagnant fluids.  The game which the Spider means to suck dry might
very well not be dead.  This is easily ascertained.

I place some Locusts of different species on the webs in my
menagerie, one on this, another on that.  The Spider comes rushing
up, binds the prey, nibbles at it gently and withdraws, waiting for
the bite to take effect.  I then take the insect and carefully
strip it of its silken shroud.  The Locust is not dead, far from
it; one would even think that he had suffered no harm.  I examine
the released prisoner through the lens in vain; I can see no trace
of a wound.

Can he be unscathed, in spite of the sort of kiss which I saw given
to him just now?  You would be ready to say so, judging by the
furious way in which he kicks in my fingers.  Nevertheless, when
put on the ground, he walks awkwardly, he seems reluctant to hop.
Perhaps it is a temporary trouble, caused by his terrible
excitement in the web.  It looks as though it would soon pass.

I lodge my Locusts in cages, with a lettuce-leaf to console them
for their trials; but they will not be comforted.  A day elapses,
followed by a second.  Not one of them touches the leaf of salad;
their appetite has disappeared.  Their movements become more
uncertain, as though hampered by irresistible torpor.  On the
second day, they are dead, every one irrecoverably dead.

The Epeira, therefore, does not incontinently kill her prey with
her delicate bite; she poisons it so as to produce a gradual
weakness, which gives the blood-sucker ample time to drain her
victim, without the least risk, before the rigor mortis stops the
flow of moisture.

The meal lasts quite twenty-four hours, if the joint be large; and
to the very end the butchered insect retains a remnant of life, a
favourable condition for the exhausting of the juices.  Once again,
we see a skilful method of slaughter, very different from the
tactics in use among the expert paralyzers or slayers.  Here there
is no display of anatomical science.  Unacquainted with the
patient's structure, the Spider stabs at random.  The virulence of
the poison does the rest.

There are, however, some very few cases in which the bite is
speedily mortal.  My notes speak of an Angular Epeira grappling
with the largest Dragon-fly in my district (AEshna grandis, LIN.).
I myself had entangled in the web this head of big game, which is
not often captured by the Epeirae.  The net shakes violently, seems
bound to break its moorings.

The Spider rushes from her leafy villa, runs boldly up to the
giantess, flings a single bundle of ropes at her and, without
further precautions, grips her with her legs, tries to subdue her
and then digs her fangs into the Dragon-fly's back.  The bite is
prolonged in such a way as to astonish me.  This is not the
perfunctory kiss with which I am already familiar; it is a deep,
determined wound.  After striking her blow, the Spider retires to a
certain distance and waits for her poison to take effect.

I at once remove the Dragon-fly.  She is dead, really and truly
dead.  Laid upon my table and left alone for twenty-four hours, she
makes not the slightest movement.  A prick of which my lens cannot
see the marks, so sharp-pointed are the Epeira's weapons, was
enough, with a little insistence, to kill the powerful animal.
Proportionately, the Rattlesnake, the Horned Viper, the
Trigonocephalus and other ill-famed serpents produce less
paralysing effects upon their victims.

And these Epeirae, so terrible to insects, I am able to handle
without any fear.  My skin does not suit them.  If I persuaded them
to bite me, what would happen to me?  Hardly anything.  We have
more cause to dread the sting of a nettle than the dagger which is
fatal to Dragon-flies.  The same virus acts differently upon this
organism and that, is formidable here and quite mild there.  What
kills the insect may easily be harmless to us.  Let us not,
however, generalize too far.  The Narbonne Lycosa, that other
enthusiastic insect-huntress, would make us pay clearly if we
attempted to take liberties with her.

It is not uninteresting to watch the Epeira at dinner.  I light
upon one, the Banded Epeira, at the moment, about three o'clock in
the afternoon, when she has captured a Locust.  Planted in the
centre of the web, on her resting-floor, she attacks the venison at
the joint of a haunch.  There is no movement, not even of the
mouth-parts, as far as I am able to discover.  The mouth lingers,
close-applied, at the point originally bitten.  There are no
intermittent mouthfuls, with the mandibles moving backwards and
forwards.  It is a sort of continuous kiss.

I visit my Epeira at intervals.  The mouth does not change its
place.  I visit her for the last time at nine o'clock in the
evening.  Matters stand exactly as they did:  after six hours'
consumption, the mouth is still sucking at the lower end of the
right haunch.  The fluid contents of the victim are transferred to
the ogress' belly, I know not how.

Next morning, the Spider is still at table.  I take away her dish.
Naught remains of the Locust but his skin, hardly altered in shape,
but utterly drained and perforated in several places.  The method,
therefore, was changed during the night.  To extract the non-fluent
residue, the viscera and muscles, the stiff cuticle had to be
tapped here, there and elsewhere, after which the tattered husk,
placed bodily in the press of the mandibles, would have been
chewed, rechewed and finally reduced to a pill, which the sated
Spider throws up.  This would have been the end of the victim, had
I not taken it away before the time.

Whether she wound or kill, the Epeira bites her captive somewhere
or other, no matter where.  This is an excellent method on her
part, because of the variety of the game that comes her way.  I see
her accepting with equal readiness whatever chance may send her:
Butterflies and Dragon-flies, Flies and Wasps, small Dung-beetles
and Locusts.  If I offer her a Mantis, a Bumble-bee, an Anoxia--the
equivalent of the common Cockchafer--and other dishes probably
unknown to her race, she accepts all and any, large and small,
thin-skinned and horny-skinned, that which goes afoot and that
which takes winged flight.  She is omnivorous, she preys on
everything, down to her own kind, should the occasion offer.

Had she to operate according to individual structure, she would
need an anatomical dictionary; and instinct is essentially
unfamiliar with generalities:  its knowledge is always confined to
limited points.  The Cerceres know their Weevils and their
Buprestis-beetles absolutely; the Sphex their Grasshoppers, their
Crickets and their Locusts; the Scoliae {34} their Cetonia- and
Oryctes-grubs.  Even so the other paralyzers.  Each has her own
victim and knows nothing of any of the others.

The same exclusive tastes prevail among the slayers.  Let us
remember, in this connection, Philanthus apivorus {35} and,
especially, the Thomisus, the comely Spider who cuts Bees' throats.
They understand the fatal blow, either in the neck or under the
chin, a thing which the Epeira does not understand; but, just
because of this talent, they are specialists.  Their province is
the Domestic Bee.

Animals are a little like ourselves:  they excel in an art only on
condition of specializing in it.  The Epeira, who, being
omnivorous, is obliged to generalize, abandons scientific methods
and makes up for this by distilling a poison capable of producing
torpor and even death, no matter what the point attacked.

Recognizing the large variety of game, we wonder how the Epeira
manages not to hesitate amid those many diverse forms, how, for
instance, she passes from the Locust to the Butterfly, so different
in appearance.  To attribute to her as a guide an extensive
zoological knowledge were wildly in excess of what we may
reasonably expect of her poor intelligence.  The thing moves,
therefore it is worth catching:  this formula seems to sum up the
Spider's wisdom.



CHAPTER XIV:  THE GARDEN SPIDERS:  THE QUESTION OF PROPERTY



A dog has found a bone.  He lies in the shade, holding it between
his paws, and studies it fondly.  It is his sacred property, his
chattel.  An Epeira has woven her web.  Here again is property; and
owning a better title than the other.  Favoured by chance and
assisted by his scent, the Dog has merely had a find; he has
neither worked nor paid for it.  The Spider is more than a casual
owner, she has created what is hers.  Its substance issued from her
body, its structure from her brain.  If ever property was
sacrosanct, hers is.

Far higher stands the work of the weaver of ideas, who tissues a
book, that other Spider's web, and out of his thought makes
something that shall instruct or thrill us.  To protect our 'bone,'
we have the police, invented for the express purpose.  To protect
the book, we have none but farcical means.  Place a few bricks one
atop the other; join them with mortar; and the law will defend your
wall.  Build up in writing an edifice of your thoughts; and it will
be open to any one, without serious impediment, to abstract stones
from it, even to take the whole, if it suit him.  A rabbit-hutch is
property; the work of the mind is not.  If the animal has eccentric
views as regards the possessions of others, we have ours as well.

'Might always has the best of the argument,' said La Fontaine, to
the great scandal of the peace-lovers.  The exigencies of verse,
rhyme and rhythm, carried the worthy fabulist further than he
intended:  he meant to say that, in a fight between mastiffs and in
other brute conflicts, the stronger is left master of the bone.  He
well knew that, as things go, success is no certificate of
excellence.  Others came, the notorious evil-doers of humanity, who
made a law of the savage maxim that might is right.

We are the larvae with the changing skins, the ugly caterpillars of
a society that is slowly, very slowly, wending its way to the
triumph of right over might.  When will this sublime metamorphosis
be accomplished?  To free ourselves from those wild-beast
brutalities, must we wait for the ocean-plains of the southern
hemisphere to flow to our side, changing the face of continents and
renewing the glacial period of the Reindeer and the Mammoth?
Perhaps, so slow is moral progress.

True, we have the bicycle, the motor-car, the dirigible airship and
other marvellous means of breaking our bones; but our morality is
not one rung the higher for it all.  One would even say that, the
farther we proceed in our conquest of matter, the more our morality
recedes.  The most advanced of our inventions consists in bringing
men down with grapeshot and explosives with the swiftness of the
reaper mowing the corn.

Would we see this might triumphant in all its beauty?  Let us spend
a few weeks in the Epeira's company.  She is the owner of a web,
her work, her most lawful property.  The question at once presents
itself:  Does the Spider possibly recognize her fabric by certain
trademarks and distinguish it from that of her fellows?

I bring about a change of webs between two neighbouring Banded
Epeirae.  No sooner is either placed upon the strange net than she
makes for the central floor, settles herself head downwards and
does not stir from it, satisfied with her neighbour's web as with
her own.  Neither by day nor by night does she try to shift her
quarters and restore matters to their pristine state.  Both Spiders
think themselves in their own domain.  The two pieces of work are
so much alike that I almost expected this.

I then decide to effect an exchange of webs between two different
species.  I move the Banded Epeira to the net of the Silky Epeira
and vice versa.  The two webs are now dissimilar; the Silky
Epeira's has a limy spiral consisting of closer and more numerous
circles.  What will the Spiders do, when thus put to the test of
the unknown?  One would think that, when one of them found meshes
too wide for her under her feet, the other meshes too narrow, they
would be frightened by this sudden change and decamp in terror.
Not at all.  Without a sign of perturbation, they remain, plant
themselves in the centre and await the coming of the game, as
though nothing extraordinary had happened.  They do more than this.
Days pass and, as long as the unfamiliar web is not wrecked to the
extent of being unserviceable, they make no attempt to weave
another in their own style.  The Spider, therefore, is incapable of
recognizing her web.  She takes another's work for hers, even when
it is produced by a stranger to her race.

We now come to the tragic side of this confusion.  Wishing to have
subjects for study within my daily reach and to save myself the
trouble of casual excursions, I collect different Epeirae whom I
find in the course of my walks and establish them on the shrubs in
my enclosure.  In this way, a rosemary-hedge, sheltered from the
wind and facing the sun, is turned into a well-stocked menagerie.
I take the Spiders from the paper bags wherein I had put them
separately, to carry them, and place them on the leaves, with no
further precaution.  It is for them to make themselves at home.  As
a rule, they do not budge all day from the place where I put them:
they wait for nightfall before seeking a suitable site whereon to
weave a net.

Some among them show less patience.  A little while ago, they
possessed a web, between the reeds of a brook or in the holm-oak
copses; and now they have none.  They go off in search, to recover
their property or seize on some one else's:  it is all the same to
them.  I come upon a Banded Epeira, newly imported, making for the
web of a Silky Epeira who has been my guest for some days now.  The
owner is at her post, in the centre of the net.  She awaits the
stranger with seeming impassiveness.  Then suddenly they grip each
other; and a desperate fight begins.  The Silky Epeira is worsted.
The other swathes her in bonds, drags her to the non-limy central
floor and, in the calmest fashion, eats her.  The dead Spider is
munched for twenty-four hours and drained to the last drop, when
the corpse, a wretched, crumpled ball, is at last flung aside.  The
web so foully conquered becomes the property of the stranger, who
uses it, if it have not suffered too much in the contest.

There is here a shadow of an excuse.  The two Spiders were of
different species; and the struggle for life often leads to these
exterminations among such as are not akin.  What would happen if
the two belonged to the same species?  It is easily seen.  I cannot
rely upon spontaneous invasions, which may be rare under normal
conditions, and I myself place a Banded Epeira on her kinswoman's
web.  A furious attack is made forthwith.  Victory, after hanging
for a moment in the balance, is once again decided in the
stranger's favour.  The vanquished party, this time a sister, is
eaten without the slightest scruple.  Her web becomes the property
of the victor.

There it is, in all its horror, the right of might:  to eat one's
like and take away their goods.  Man did the same in days of old:
he stripped and ate his fellows.  We continue to rob one another,
both as nations and as individuals; but we no longer eat one
another:  the custom has grown obsolete since we discovered an
acceptable substitute in the mutton-chop.

Let us not, however, blacken the Spider beyond her deserts.  She
does not live by warring on her kith and kin; she does not of her
own accord attempt the conquest of another's property.  It needs
extraordinary circumstances to rouse her to these villainies.  I
take her from her web and place her on another's.  From that
moment, she knows no distinction between meum and tuum:  the thing
which the leg touches at once becomes real estate.  And the
intruder, if she be the stronger, ends by eating the occupier, a
radical means of cutting short disputes.

Apart from disturbances similar to those provoked by myself,
disturbances that are possible in the everlasting conflict of
events, the Spider, jealous of her own web, seems to respect the
webs of others.  She never indulges in brigandage against her
fellows except when dispossessed of her net, especially in the
daytime, for weaving is never done by day:  this work is reserved
for the night.  When, however, she is deprived of her livelihood
and feels herself the stronger, then she attacks her neighbour,
rips her open, feeds on her and takes possession of her goods.  Let
us make allowances and proceed.

We will now examine Spiders of more alien habits.  The Banded and
the Silky Epeira differ greatly in form and colouring.  The first
has a plump, olive-shaped belly, richly belted with white, bright-
yellow and black; the second's abdomen is flat, of a silky white
and pinked into festoons.  Judging only by dress and figure, we
should not think of closely connecting the two Spiders.

But high above shapes tower tendencies, those main characteristics
which our methods of classification, so particular about minute
details of form, ought to consult more widely than they do.  The
two dissimilar Spiders have exactly similar ways of living.  Both
of them prefer to hunt by day and never leave their webs; both sign
their work with a zigzag flourish.  Their nets are almost
identical, so much so that the Banded Epeira uses the Silky
Epeira's web after eating its owner.  The Silky Epeira, on her
side, when she is the stronger, dispossesses her belted cousin and
devours her.  Each is at home on the other's web, when the argument
of might triumphant has ended the discussion.

Let us next take the case of the Cross Spider, a hairy beast of
varying shades of reddish-brown.  She has three large white spots
upon her back, forming a triple-barred cross.  She hunts mostly at
night, shuns the sun and lives by day on the adjacent shrubs, in a
shady retreat which communicates with the lime-snare by means of a
telegraph-wire.  Her web is very similar in structure and
appearance to those of the two others.  What will happen if I
procure her the visit of a Banded Epeira?

The lady of the triple cross is invaded by day, in the full light
of the sun, thanks to my mischievous intermediary.  The web is
deserted; the proprietress is in her leafy hut.  The telegraph-wire
performs its office; the Cross Spider hastens down, strides all
round her property, beholds the danger and hurriedly returns to her
hiding-place, without taking any measures against the intruder.

The latter, on her side, does not seem to be enjoying herself.
Were she placed on the web of one of her sisters, or even on that
of the Silky Epeira, she would have posted herself in the centre,
as soon as the struggle had ended in the other's death.  This time
there is no struggle, for the web is deserted; nothing prevents her
from taking her position in the centre, the chief strategic point;
and yet she does not move from the place where I put her.

I tickle her gently with the tip of a long straw.  When at home, if
teased in this way, the Banded Epeira--like the others, for that
matter--violently shakes the web to intimidate the aggressor.  This
time, nothing happens:  despite my repeated enticements, the Spider
does not stir a limb.  It is as though she were numbed with terror.
And she has reason to be:  the other is watching her from her lofty
loop-hole.

This is probably not the only cause of her fright.  When my straw
does induce her to take a few steps, I see her lift her legs with
some difficulty.  She tugs a bit, drags her tarsi till she almost
breaks the supporting threads.  It is not the progress of an agile
rope-walker; it is the hesitating gait of entangled feet.  Perhaps
the lime-threads are stickier than in her own web.  The glue is of
a different quality; and her sandals are not greased to the extent
which the new degree of adhesiveness would demand.

Anyhow, things remain as they are for long hours on end:  the
Banded Epeira motionless on the edge of the web; the other lurking
in her hut; both apparently most uneasy.  At sunset, the lover of
darkness plucks up courage.  She descends from her green tent and,
without troubling about the stranger, goes straight to the centre
of the web, where the telegraph-wire brings her.  Panic-stricken at
this apparition, the Banded Epeira releases herself with a jerk and
disappears in the rosemary-thicket.

The experiment, though repeatedly renewed with different subjects,
gave me no other results.  Distrustful of a web dissimilar to her
own, if not in structure, at least in stickiness, the bold Banded
Epeira shows the white feather and refuses to attack the Cross
Spider.  The latter, on her side, either does not budge from her
day shelter in the foliage, or else rushes back to it, after taking
a hurried glance at the stranger.  She here awaits the coming of
the night.  Under favour of the darkness, which gives her fresh
courage and activity, she re-appears upon the scene and puts the
intruder to flight by her mere presence, aided, if need be, by a
cuff or two.  Injured right is the victor.

Morality is satisfied; but let us not congratulate the Spider
therefore.  If the invader respects the invaded, it is because very
serious reasons impel her.  First, she would have to contend with
an adversary ensconced in a stronghold whose ambushes are unknown
to the assailant.  Secondly, the web, if conquered, would be
inconvenient to use, because of the lime-threads, possessing a
different degree of stickiness from those which she knows so well.
To risk one's skin for a thing of doubtful value were twice
foolish.  The Spider knows this and forbears.

But let the Banded Epeira, deprived of her web, come upon that of
one of her kind or of the Silky Epeira, who works her gummy twine
in the same manner:  then discretion is thrown to the winds; the
owner is fiercely ripped open and possession taken of the property.

Might is right, says the beast; or, rather, it knows no right.  The
animal world is a rout of appetites, acknowledging no other rein
than impotence.  Mankind, alone capable of emerging from the slough
of the instincts, is bringing equity into being, is creating it
slowly as its conception grows clearer.  Out of the sacred
rushlight, so flickering as yet, but gaining strength from age to
age, man will make a flaming torch that will put an end, among us,
to the principles of the brutes and, one day, utterly change the
face of society.



CHAPTER XV:  THE LABYRINTH SPIDER



While the Epeirae, with their gorgeous net-tapestries, are
incomparable weavers, many other Spiders excel in ingenious devices
for filling their stomachs and leaving a lineage behind them:  the
two primary laws of living things.  Some of them are celebrities of
long-standing renown, who are mentioned in all the books.

Certain Mygales {36} inhabit a burrow, like the Narbonne Lycosa,
but of a perfection unknown to the brutal Spider of the waste-
lands.  The Lycosa surrounds the mouth of her shaft with a simple
parapet, a mere collection of tiny pebbles, sticks and silk; the
others fix a movable door to theirs, a round shutter with a hinge,
a groove and a set of bolts.  When the Mygale comes home, the lid
drops into the groove and fits so exactly that there is no
possibility of distinguishing the join.  If the aggressor persist
and seek to raise the trap-door, the recluse pushes the bolt, that
is to say, plants her claws into certain holes on the opposite side
to the hinge, props herself against the wall and holds the door
firmly.

Another, the Argyroneta, or Water Spider, builds herself an elegant
silken diving-bell, in which she stores air.  Thus supplied with
the wherewithal to breathe, she awaits the coming of the game and
keeps herself cool meanwhile.  At times of scorching heat, hers
must be a regular sybaritic abode, such as eccentric man has
sometimes ventured to build under water, with mighty blocks of
stone and marble.  The submarine palaces of Tiberius are no more
than an odious memory; the Water Spider's dainty cupola still
flourishes.

If I possessed documents derived from personal observation, I
should like to speak of these ingenious workers; I would gladly add
a few unpublished facts to their life-history.  But I must abandon
the idea.  The Water Spider is not found in my district.  The
Mygale, the expert in hinged doors, is found there, but very
seldom.  I saw one once, on the edge of a path skirting a copse.
Opportunity, as we know, is fleeting.  The observer, more than any
other, is obliged to take it by the forelock.  Preoccupied as I was
with other researches, I but gave a glance at the magnificent
subject which good fortune offered.  The opportunity fled and has
never returned.

Let us make up for it with trivial things of frequent encounter, a
condition favourable to consecutive study.  What is common is not
necessarily unimportant.  Give it our sustained attention and we
shall discover in it merits which our former ignorance prevented us
from seeing.  When patiently entreated, the least of creatures adds
its note to the harmonies of life.

In the fields around, traversed, in these days, with a tired step,
but still vigilantly explored, I find nothing so often as the
Labyrinth Spider (Agelena labyrinthica, CLERCK.).  Not a hedge but
shelters a few at its foot, amidst grass, in quiet, sunny nooks.
In the open country and especially in hilly places laid bare by the
wood-man's axe, the favourite sites are tufts of bracken, rock-
rose, lavender, everlasting and rosemary cropped close by the teeth
of the flocks.  This is where I resort, as the isolation and
kindliness of the supports lend themselves to proceedings which
might not be tolerated by the unfriendly hedge.

Several times a week, in July, I go to study my Spiders on the
spot, at an early hour, before the sun beats fiercely on one's
neck.  The children accompany me, each provided with an orange
wherewith to slake the thirst that will not be slow in coming.
They lend me their good eyes and supple limbs.  The expedition
promises to be fruitful.

We soon discover high silk buildings, betrayed at a distance by the
glittering threads which the dawn has converted into dewy rosaries.
The children are wonderstruck at those glorious chandeliers, so
much so that they forget their oranges for a moment.  Nor am I, on
my part, indifferent.  A splendid spectacle indeed is that of our
Spider's labyrinth, heavy with the tears of the night and lit up by
the first rays of the sun.  Accompanied as it is by the Thrushes'
symphony, this alone is worth getting up for.

Half an hour's heat; and the magic jewels disappear with the dew.
Now is the moment to inspect the webs.  Here is one spreading its
sheet over a large cluster of rock-roses; it is the size of a
handkerchief.  A profusion of guy-ropes, attached to any chance
projection, moor it to the brushwood.  There is not a twig but
supplies a contact-point.  Entwined on every side, surrounded and
surmounted, the bush disappears from view, veiled in white muslin.

The web is flat at the edges, as far as the unevenness of the
support permits, and gradually hollows into a crater, not unlike
the bell of a hunting-horn.  The central portion is a cone-shaped
gulf, a funnel whose neck, narrowing by degrees, dives
perpendicularly into the leafy thicket to a depth of eight or nine
inches.

At the entrance to the tube, in the gloom of that murderous alley,
sits the Spider, who looks at us and betrays no great excitement at
our presence.  She is grey, modestly adorned on the thorax with two
black ribbons and on the abdomen with two stripes in which white
specks alternate with brown.  At the tip of the belly, two small,
mobile appendages form a sort of tail, a rather curious feature in
a Spider.

The crater-shaped web is not of the same structure throughout.  At
the borders, it is a gossamer weft of sparse threads; nearer the
centre, the texture becomes first fine muslin and then satin; lower
still, on the narrower part of the opening, it is a network of
roughly lozenged meshes.  Lastly, the neck of the funnel, the usual
resting-place, is formed of solid silk.

The Spider never ceases working at her carpet, which represents her
investigation-platform.  Every night she goes to it, walks over it,
inspecting her snares, extending her domain and increasing it with
new threads.  The work is done with the silk constantly hanging
from the spinnerets and constantly extracted as the animal moves
about.  The neck of the funnel, being more often walked upon than
the rest of the dwelling, is therefore provided with a thicker
upholstery.  Beyond it are the slopes of the crater, which are also
much-frequented regions.  Spokes of some regularity fix the
diameter of the mouth; a swaying walk and the guiding aid of the
caudal appendages have laid lozengy meshes across these spokes.
This part has been strengthened by the nightly rounds of
inspection.  Lastly come the less-visited expanses, which
consequently have a thinner carpet.

At the bottom of the passage dipping into the brushwood, we might
expect to find a secret cabin, a wadded cell where the Spider would
take refuge in her hours of leisure.  The reality is something
entirely different.  The long funnel-neck gapes at its lower end,
where a private door stands always ajar, allowing the animal, when
hard-pushed, to escape through the grass and gain the open.

It is well to know this arrangement of the home, if you wish to
capture the Spider without hurting her.  When attacked from the
front, the fugitive runs down and slips through the postern-gate at
the bottom.  To look for her by rummaging in the brushwood often
leads to nothing, so swift is her flight; besides, a blind search
entails a great risk of maiming her.  Let us eschew violence, which
is but seldom successful, and resort to craft.

We catch sight of the Spider at the entrance to her tube.  If
practicable, squeeze the bottom of the tuft, containing the neck of
the funnel, with both hands.  That is enough; the animal is caught.
Feeling its retreat cut off, it readily darts into the paper bag
held out to it; if necessary, it can be stimulated with a bit of
straw.  In this way, I fill my cages with subjects that have not
been demoralized by contusions.

The surface of the crater is not exactly a snare.  It is just
possible for the casual pedestrian to catch his legs in the silky
carpets; but giddy-pates who come here for a walk must be very
rare.  What is wanted is a trap capable of securing the game that
hops or flies.  The Epeira has her treacherous limed net; the
Spider of the bushes has her no less treacherous labyrinth.

Look above the web.  What a forest of ropes!  It might be the
rigging of a ship disabled by a storm.  They run from every twig of
the supporting shrubs, they are fastened to the tip of every
branch.  There are long ropes and short ropes, upright and
slanting, straight and bent, taut and slack, all criss-cross and a-
tangle, to the height of three feet or so in inextricable disorder.
The whole forms a chaos of netting, a labyrinth which none can pass
through, unless he be endowed with wings of exceptional power.

We have here nothing similar to the lime-threads used by the Garden
Spiders.  The threads are not sticky; they act only by their
confused multitude.  Would you care to see the trap at work?  Throw
a small Locust into the rigging.  Unable to obtain a steady foot-
hold on that shaky support, he flounders about; and the more he
struggles the more he entangles his shackles.  The Spider, spying
on the threshold of her abyss, lets him have his way.  She does not
run up the shrouds of the mast-work to seize the desperate
prisoner; she waits until his bonds of threads, twisted backwards
and forwards, make him fall on the web.

He falls; the other comes and flings herself upon her prostrate
prey.  The attack is not without danger.  The Locust is demoralized
rather than tied up; it is merely bits of broken thread that he is
trailing from his legs.  The bold assailant does not mind.  Without
troubling, like the Epeirae, to bury her capture under a paralysing
winding-sheet, she feels it, to make sure of its quality, and then,
regardless of kicks, inserts her fangs.

The bite is usually given at the lower end of a haunch:  not that
this place is more vulnerable than any other thin-skinned part, but
probably because it has a better flavour.  The different webs which
I inspect to study the food in the larder show me, among other
joints, various Flies and small Butterflies and carcasses of
almost-untouched Locusts, all deprived of their hind-legs, or at
least of one.  Locusts' legs often dangle, emptied of their
succulent contents, on the edges of the web, from the meat-hooks of
the butcher's shop.  In my urchin-days, days free from prejudices
in regard to what one ate, I, like many others, was able to
appreciate that dainty.  It is the equivalent, on a very small
scale, of the larger legs of the Crayfish.

The rigging-builder, therefore, to whom we have just thrown a
Locust attacks the prey at the lower end of a thigh.  The bite is a
lingering one:  once the Spider has planted her fangs, she does not
let go.  She drinks, she sips, she sucks.  When this first point is
drained, she passes on to others, to the second haunch in
particular, until the prey becomes an empty hulk without losing its
outline.

We have seen that Garden Spiders feed in a similar way, bleeding
their venison and drinking it instead of eating it.  At last,
however, in the comfortable post-prandial hours, they take up the
drained morsel, chew it, rechew it and reduce it to a shapeless
ball.  It is a dessert for the teeth to toy with.  The Labyrinth
Spider knows nothing of the diversions of the table; she flings the
drained remnants out of her web, without chewing them.  Although it
lasts long, the meal is eaten in perfect safety.  From the first
bite, the Locust becomes a lifeless thing; the Spider's poison has
settled him.

The labyrinth is greatly inferior, as a work of art, to that
advanced geometrical contrivance, the Garden Spider's net; and, in
spite of its ingenuity, it does not give a favourable notion of its
constructor.  It is hardly more than a shapeless scaffolding, run
up anyhow.  And yet, like the others, the builder of this slovenly
edifice must have her own principles of beauty and accuracy.  As it
is, the prettily-latticed mouth of the crater makes us suspect
this; the nest, the mother's usual masterpiece, will prove it to
the full.

When laying-time is at hand, the Spider changes her residence; she
abandons her web in excellent condition; she does not return to it.
Whoso will can take possession of the house.  The hour has come to
found the family-establishment.  But where?  The Spider knows right
well; I am in the dark.  Mornings are spent in fruitless searches.
In vain I ransack the bushes that carry the webs:  I never find
aught that realizes my hopes.

I learn the secret at last.  I chance upon a web which, though
deserted, is not yet dilapidated, proving that it has been but
lately quitted.  Instead of hunting in the brushwood whereon it
rests, let us inspect the neighbourhood, to a distance of a few
paces.  If these contain a low, thick cluster, the nest is there,
hidden from the eye.  It carries an authentic certificate of its
origin, for the mother invariably occupies it.

By this method of investigation, far from the labyrinth-trap, I
become the owner of as many nests as are needed to satisfy my
curiosity.  They do not by a long way come up to my idea of the
maternal talent.  They are clumsy bundles of dead leaves, roughly
drawn together with silk threads.  Under this rude covering is a
pouch of fine texture containing the egg-casket, all in very bad
condition, because of the inevitable tears incurred in its
extrication from the brushwood.  No, I shall not be able to judge
of the artist's capacity by these rags and tatters.

The insect, in its buildings, has its own architectural rules,
rules as unchangeable as anatomical peculiarities.  Each group
builds according to the same set of principles, conforming to the
laws of a very elementary system of aesthetics; but often
circumstances beyond the architect's control--the space at her
disposal, the unevenness of the site, the nature of the material
and other accidental causes--interfere with the worker's plans and
disturb the structure.  Then virtual regularity is translated into
actual chaos; order degenerates into disorder.

We might discover an interesting subject of research in the type
adopted by each species when the work is accomplished without
hindrances.  The Banded Epeira weaves the wallet of her eggs in the
open, on a slim branch that does not get in her way; and her work
is a superbly artistic jar.  The Silky Epeira also has all the
elbow-room she needs; and her paraboloid is not without elegance.
Can the Labyrinth Spider, that other spinstress of accomplished
merit, be ignorant of the precepts of beauty when the time comes
for her to weave a tent for her offspring?  As yet, what I have
seen of her work is but an unsightly bundle.  Is that all she can
do?

I look for better things if circumstances favour her.  Toiling in
the midst of a dense thicket, among a tangle of dead leaves and
twigs, she may well produce a very inaccurate piece of work; but
compel her to labour when free from all impediment:  she will then-
-I am convinced of it beforehand--apply her talents without
constraint and show herself an adept in the building of graceful
nests.

As laying-time approaches, towards the middle of August, I instal
half-a-dozen Labyrinth Spiders in large wire-gauze cages, each
standing in an earthen pan filled with sand.  A sprig of thyme,
planted in the centre, will furnish supports for the structure,
together with the trellis-work of the top and sides.  There is no
other furniture, no dead leaves, which would spoil the shape of the
nest if the mother were minded to employ them as a covering.  By
way of provision, Locusts, every day.  They are readily accepted,
provided they be tender and not too large.

The experiment works perfectly.  August is hardly over before I am
in possession of six nests, magnificent in shape and of a dazzling
whiteness.  The latitude of the workshop has enabled the spinstress
to follow the inspiration of her instinct without serious
obstacles; and the result is a masterpiece of symmetry and
elegance, if we allow for a few angularities demanded by the
suspension-points.

It is an oval of exquisite white muslin, a diaphanous abode wherein
the mother must make a long stay to watch over the brood.  The size
is nearly that of a Hen's egg.  The cabin is open at either end.
The front-entrance broadens into a gallery; the back-entrance
tapers into a funnel-neck.  I fail to see the object of this neck.
As for the opening in front, which is wider, this is, beyond a
doubt, a victualling-door.  I see the Spider, at intervals,
standing here on the look-out for the Locust, whom she consumes
outside, taking care not to soil the spotless sanctuary with
corpses.

The structure of the nest is not without a certain similarity to
that of the home occupied during the hunting-season.  The passage
at the back represents the funnel-neck, that ran almost down to the
ground and afforded an outlet for flight in case of grave danger.
The one in front, expanding into a mouth kept wide open by cords
stretched backwards and forwards, recalls the yawning gulf into
which the victims used to fall.  Every part of the old dwelling is
repeated:  even the labyrinth, though this, it is true, is on a
much smaller scale.  In front of the bell-shaped mouth is a tangle
of threads wherein the passers-by are caught.  Each species, in
this way, possesses a primary architectural model which is followed
as a whole, in spite of altered conditions.  The animal knows its
trade thoroughly, but it does not know and will never know aught
else, being incapable of originality.

Now this palace of silk, when all is said, is nothing more than a
guard-house.  Behind the soft, milky opalescence of the wall
glimmers the egg-tabernacle, with its form vaguely suggesting the
star of some order of knighthood.  It is a large pocket, of a
splendid dead-white, isolated on every side by radiating pillars
which keep it motionless in the centre of the tapestry.  These
pillars are about ten in number and are slender in the middle,
expanding at one end into a conical capital and at the other into a
base of the same shape.  They face one another and mark the
position of the vaulted corridors which allow free movement in
every direction around the central chamber.  The mother walks
gravely to and fro under the arches of her cloisters, she stops
first here, then there; she makes a lengthy auscultation of the
egg-wallet; she listens to all that happens inside the satin
wrapper.  To disturb her would be barbarous.

For a closer examination, let us use the dilapidated nests which we
brought from the fields.  Apart from its pillars, the egg-pocket is
an inverted conoid, reminding us of the work of the Silky Epeira.
Its material is rather stout; my pincers, pulling at it, do not
tear it without difficulty.  Inside the bag there is nothing but an
extremely fine, white wadding and, lastly, the eggs, numbering
about a hundred and comparatively large, for they measure a
millimetre and a half. {37}  They are very pale amber-yellow beads,
which do not stick together and which roll freely as soon as I
remove the swan's-down shroud.  Let us put everything into a glass-
tube to study the hatching.

We will now retrace our steps a little.  When laying-time comes,
the mother forsakes her dwelling, her crater into which her falling
victims dropped, her labyrinth in which the flight of the Midges
was cut short; she leaves intact the apparatus that enabled her to
live at her ease.  Thoughtful of her natural duties, she goes to
found another establishment at a distance.  Why at a distance?

She has still a few long months to live and she needs nourishment.
Were it not better, then, to lodge the eggs in the immediate
neighbourhood of the present home and to continue her hunting with
the excellent snare at her disposal?  The watching of the nest and
the easy acquisition of provender would go hand in hand.  The
Spider is of another opinion; and I suspect the reason.

The sheet-net and the labyrinth that surmounts it are objects
visible from afar, owing to their whiteness and the height whereat
they are placed.  Their scintillation in the sun, in frequented
paths, attracts Mosquitoes and Butterflies, like the lamps in our
rooms and the fowler's looking-glass.  Whoso comes to look at the
bright thing too closely dies the victim of his curiosity.  There
is nothing better for playing upon the folly of the passer-by, but
also nothing more dangerous to the safety of the family.

Harpies will not fail to come running at this signal, showing up
against the green; guided by the position of the web, they will
assuredly find the precious purse; and a strange grub, feasting on
a hundred new-laid eggs, will ruin the establishment.  I do not
know these enemies, not having sufficient materials at my disposal
for a register of the parasites; but, from indications gathered
elsewhere, I suspect them.

The Banded Epeira, trusting to the strength of her stuff, fixes her
nest in the sight of all, hangs it on the brushwood, taking no
precautions whatever to hide it.  And a bad business it proves for
her.  Her jar provides me with an Ichneumon {38} possessed of the
inoculating larding-pin:  a Cryptus who, as a grub, had fed on
Spiders' eggs.  Nothing but empty shells was left inside the
central keg; the germs were completely exterminated.  There are
other Ichneumon-flies, moreover, addicted to robbing Spiders'
nests; a basket of fresh eggs is their offspring's regular food.

Like any other, the Labyrinth Spider dreads the scoundrelly advent
of the pickwallet; she provides for it and, to shield herself
against it as far as possible, chooses a hiding-place outside her
dwelling, far removed from the tell-tale web.  When she feels her
ovaries ripen, she shifts her quarters; she goes off at night to
explore the neighbourhood and seek a less dangerous refuge.  The
points selected are, by preference, the low brambles dragging along
the ground, keeping their dense verdure during the winter and
crammed with dead leaves from the oaks hard by.  Rosemary-tufts,
which gain in thickness what they lose in height on the unfostering
rock, suit her particularly.  This is where I usually find her
nest, not without long seeking, so well is it hidden.

So far, there is no departure from current usage.  As the world is
full of creatures on the prowl for tender mouthfuls, every mother
has her apprehensions; she also has her natural wisdom, which
advises her to establish her family in secret places.  Very few
neglect this precaution; each, in her own manner, conceals the eggs
she lays.

In the case of the Labyrinth Spider, the protection of the brood is
complicated by another condition.  In the vast majority of
instances, the eggs, once lodged in a favourable spot, are
abandoned to themselves, left to the chances of good or ill
fortune.  The Spider of the brush-wood, on the contrary, endowed
with greater maternal devotion, has, like the Crab Spider, to mount
guard over hers until they hatch.

With a few threads and some small leaves joined together, the Crab
Spider builds, above her lofty nest, a rudimentary watch-tower
where she stays permanently, greatly emaciated, flattened into a
sort of wrinkled shell through the emptying of her ovaries and the
total absence of food.  And this mere shred, hardly more than a
skin that persists in living without eating, stoutly defends her
egg-sack, shows fight at the approach of any tramp.  She does not
make up her mind to die until the little ones are gone.

The Labyrinth Spider is better treated.  After laying her eggs, so
far from becoming thin, she preserves an excellent appearance and a
round belly.  Moreover, she does not lose her appetite and is
always prepared to bleed a Locust.  She therefore requires a
dwelling with a hunting-box close to the eggs watched over.  We
know this dwelling, built in strict accordance with artistic canons
under the shelter of my cages.

Remember the magnificent oval guard-room, running into a vestibule
at either end; the egg-chamber slung in the centre and isolated on
every side by half a score of pillars; the front-hall expanding
into a wide mouth and surmounted by a network of taut threads
forming a trap.  The semi-transparency of the walls allows us to
see the Spider engaged in her household affairs.  Her cloister of
vaulted passages enables her to proceed to any point of the star-
shaped pouch containing the eggs.  Indefatigable in her rounds, she
stops here and there; she fondly feels the satin, listens to the
secrets of the wallet.  If I shake the net at any point with a
straw, she quickly runs up to enquire what is happening.  Will this
vigilance frighten off the Ichneumon and other lovers of omelettes?
Perhaps so.  But, though this danger be averted, others will come
when the mother is no longer there.

Her attentive watch does not make her overlook her meals.  One of
the Locusts whereof I renew the supply at intervals in the cages is
caught in the cords of the great entrance-hall.  The Spider arrives
hurriedly, snatches the giddy-pate and disjoints his shanks, which
she empties of their contents, the best part of the insect.  The
remainder of the carcass is afterwards drained more or less,
according to her appetite at the time.  The meal is taken outside
the guard-room, on the threshold, never indoors.

These are not capricious mouthfuls, serving to beguile the boredom
of the watch for a brief while; they are substantial repasts, which
require several sittings.  Such an appetite astonishes me, after I
have seen the Crab Spider, that no less ardent watcher, refuse the
Bees whom I give her and allow herself to die of inanition.  Can
this other mother have so great a need as that to eat?  Yes,
certainly she has; and for an imperative reason.

At the beginning of her work, she spent a large amount of silk,
perhaps all that her reserves contained; for the double dwelling--
for herself and for her offspring--is a huge edifice, exceedingly
costly in materials; and yet, for nearly another month, I see her
adding layer upon layer both to the wall of the large cabin and to
that of the central chamber, so much so that the texture, which at
first was translucent gauze, becomes opaque satin.  The walls never
seem thick enough; the Spider is always working at them.  To
satisfy this lavish expenditure, she must incessantly, by means of
feeding, fill her silk-glands as and when she empties them by
spinning.  Food is the means whereby she keeps the inexhaustible
factory going.

A month passes and, about the middle of September, the little ones
hatch, but without leaving their tabernacle, where they are to
spend the winter packed in soft wadding.  The mother continues to
watch and spin, lessening her activity from day to day.  She
recruits herself with a Locust at longer intervals; she sometimes
scorns those whom I myself entangle in her trap.  This increasing
abstemiousness, a sign of decrepitude, slackens and at last stops
the work of the spinnerets.

For four or five weeks longer, the mother never ceases her
leisurely inspection-rounds, happy at hearing the new-born Spiders
swarming in the wallet.  At length, when October ends, she clutches
her offspring's nursery and dies withered.  She has done all that
maternal devotion can do; the special providence of tiny animals
will do the rest.  When spring comes, the youngsters will emerge
from their snug habitation, disperse all over the neighbourhood by
the expedient of the floating thread and weave their first attempts
at a labyrinth on the tufts of thyme.

Accurate in structure and neat in silk-work though they be, the
nests of the caged captives do not tell us everything; we must go
back to what happens in the fields, with their complicated
conditions.  Towards the end of December, I again set out in
search, aided by all my youthful collaborators.  We inspect the
stunted rosemaries along the edge of a path sheltered by a rocky,
wooded slope; we lift the branches that spread over the ground.
Our zeal is rewarded with success.  In a couple of hours, I am the
owner of some nests.

Pitiful pieces of work are they, injured beyond recognition by the
assaults of the weather!  It needs the eyes of faith to see in
these ruins the equivalent of the edifices built inside my cages.
Fastened to the creeping branch, the unsightly bundle lies on the
sand heaped up by the rains.  Oak-leaves, roughly joined by a few
threads, wrap it all round.  One of these leaves, larger than the
others, roofs it in and serves as a scaffolding for the whole of
the ceiling.  If we did not see the silky remnants of the two
vestibules projecting and feel a certain resistance when separating
the parts of the bundle, we might take the thing for a casual
accumulation, the work of the rain and the wind.

Let us examine our find and look more closely into its
shapelessness.  Here is the large room, the maternal cabin, which
rips as the coating of leaves is removed; here are the circular
galleries of the guard-room; here are the central chamber and its
pillars, all in a fabric of immaculate white.  The dirt from the
damp ground has not penetrated to this dwelling protected by its
wrapper of dead leaves.

Now open the habitation of the offspring.  What is this?  To my
utter astonishment, the contents of the chamber are a kernel of
earthy matters, as though the muddy rain-water had been allowed to
soak through.  Put aside that idea, says the satin wall, which
itself is perfectly clean inside.  It is most certainly the
mother's doing, a deliberate piece of work, executed with minute
care.  The grains of sand are stuck together with a cement of silk;
and the whole resists the pressure of the fingers.

If we continue to unshell the kernel, we find, below this mineral
layer, a last silken tunic that forms a globe around the brood.  No
sooner do we tear this final covering than the frightened little
ones run away and scatter with an agility that is singular at this
cold and torpid season.

To sum up, when working in the natural state, the Labyrinth Spider
builds around the eggs, between two sheets of satin, a wall
composed of a great deal of sand and a little silk.  To stop the
Ichneumon's probe and the teeth of the other ravagers, the best
thing that occurred to her was this hoarding which combines the
hardness of flint with the softness of muslin.

This means of defence seems to be pretty frequent among Spiders.
Our own big House Spider, Tegenaria domestica, encloses her eggs in
a globule strengthened with a rind of silk and of crumbly wreckage
from the mortar of the walls.  Other species, living in the open
under stones, work in the same way.  They wrap their eggs in a
mineral shell held together with silk.  The same fears have
inspired the same protective methods.

Then how comes it that, of the five mothers reared in my cages, not
one has had recourse to the clay rampart?  After all, sand
abounded:  the pans in which the wire-gauze covers stood were full
of it.  On the other hand, under normal conditions, I have often
come across nests without any mineral casing.  These incomplete
nests were placed at some height from the ground, in the thick of
the brushwood; the others, on the contrary, those supplied with a
coating of sand, lay on the ground.

The method of the work explains these differences.  The concrete of
our buildings is obtained by the simultaneous manipulation of
gravel and mortar.  In the same way, the Spider mixes the cement of
the silk with the grains of sand; the spinnerets never cease
working, while the legs fling under the adhesive spray the solid
materials collected in the immediate neighbourhood.  The operation
would be impossible if, after cementing each grain of sand, it were
necessary to stop the work of the spinnerets and go to a distance
to fetch further stony elements.  Those materials have to be right
under her legs; otherwise the Spider does without and continues her
work just the same.

In my cages, the sand is too far off.  To obtain it, the Spider
would have to leave the top of the dome, where the nest is being
built on its trellis-work support; she would have to come down some
nine inches.  The worker refuses to take this trouble, which, if
repeated in the case of each grain, would make the action of the
spinnerets too irksome.  She also refuses to do so when, for
reasons which I have not fathomed, the site chosen is some way up
in the tuft of rosemary.  But, when the nest touches the ground,
the clay rampart is never missing.

Are we to see in this fact proof of an instinct capable of
modification, either making for decadence and gradually neglecting
what was the ancestors' safeguard, or making for progress and
advancing, hesitatingly, towards perfection in the mason's art?  No
inference is permissible in either direction.  The Labyrinth Spider
has simply taught us that instinct possesses resources which are
employed or left latent according to the conditions of the moment.
Place sand under her legs and the spinstress will knead concrete;
refuse her that sand, or put it out of her reach, and the Spider
will remain a simple silk-worker, always ready, however, to turn
mason under favourable conditions.  The aggregate of things that
come within the observer's scope proves that it were mad to expect
from her any further innovations, such as would utterly change her
methods of manufacture and cause her, for instance, to abandon her
cabin, with its two entrance-halls and its star-like tabernacle, in
favour of the Banded Epeira's pear-shaped gourd.



CHAPTER XVI:  THE CLOTHO SPIDER



She is named Durand's Clotho (Clotho Durandi, LATR.), in memory of
him who first called attention to this particular Spider.  To enter
on eternity under the safe-conduct of a diminutive animal which
saves us from speedy oblivion under the mallows and rockets is no
contemptible advantage.  Most men disappear without leaving an echo
to repeat their name; they lie buried in forgetfulness, the worst
of graves.

Others, among the naturalists, benefit by the designation given to
this or that object in life's treasure-house:  it is the skiff
wherein they keep afloat for a brief while.  A patch of lichen on
the bark of an old tree, a blade of grass, a puny beastie:  any one
of these hands down a man's name to posterity as effectively as a
new comet.  For all its abuses, this manner of honouring the
departed is eminently respectable.  If we would carve an epitaph of
some duration, what could we find better than a Beetle's wing-case,
a Snail's shell or a Spider's web?  Granite is worth none of them.
Entrusted to the hard stone, an inscription becomes obliterated;
entrusted to a Butterfly's wing, it is indestructible.  'Durand,'
therefore, by all means.

But why drag in 'Clotho'?  Is it the whim of a nomenclator, at a
loss for words to denote the ever-swelling tide of beasts that
require cataloguing?  Not entirely.  A mythological name came to
his mind, one which sounded well and which, moreover, was not out
of place in designating a spinstress.  The Clotho of antiquity is
the youngest of the three Fates; she holds the distaff whence our
destinies are spun, a distaff wound with plenty of rough flocks,
just a few shreds of silk and, very rarely, a thin strand of gold.

Prettily shaped and clad, as far as a Spider can be, the Clotho of
the naturalists is, above all, a highly talented spinstress; and
this is the reason why she is called after the distaff-bearing
deity of the infernal regions.  It is a pity that the analogy
extends no further.  The mythological Clotho, niggardly with her
silk and lavish with her coarse flocks, spins us a harsh existence;
the eight-legged Clotho uses naught but exquisite silk.  She works
for herself; the other works for us, who are hardly worth the
trouble.

Would we make her acquaintance?  On the rocky slopes in the
oliveland, scorched and blistered by the sun, turn over the flat
stones, those of a fair size; search, above all, the piles which
the shepherds set up for a seat whence to watch the sheep browsing
amongst the lavender below.  Do not be too easily disheartened:
the Clotho is rare; not every spot suits her.  If fortune smile at
last upon our perseverance, we shall see, clinging to the lower
surface of the stone which we have lifted, an edifice of a weather-
beaten aspect, shaped like an over-turned cupola and about the size
of half a tangerine orange.  The outside is encrusted or hung with
small shells, particles of earth and, especially, dried insects.

The edge of the cupola is scalloped into a dozen angular lobes, the
points of which spread and are fixed to the stone.  In between
these straps is the same number of spacious inverted arches.  The
whole represents the Ishmaelite's camel-hair tent, but upside down.
A flat roof, stretched between the straps, closes the top of the
dwelling.

Then where is the entrance?  All the arches of the edge open upon
the roof; not one leads to the interior.  The eye seeks in vain;
there is nothing to point to a passage between the inside and the
outside.  Yet the owner of the house must go out from time to time,
were it only in search of food; on returning from her expedition,
she must go in again.  How does she make her exits and her
entrances?  A straw will tell us the secret.

Pass it over the threshold of the various arches.  Everywhere, the
searching straw encounters resistance; everywhere, it finds the
place rigorously closed.  But one of the scallops, differing in no
wise from the others in appearance, if cleverly coaxed, opens at
the edge into two lips and stands slightly ajar.  This is the door,
which at once shuts again of its own elasticity.  Nor is this all:
the Spider, when she returns home, often bolts herself in, that is
to say, she joins and fastens the two leaves of the door with a
little silk.

The Mason Mygale is no safer in her burrow, with its lid
undistinguishable from the soil and moving on a hinge, than is the
Clotho in her tent, which is inviolable by any enemy ignorant of
the device.  The Clotho, when in danger, runs quickly home; she
opens the chink with a touch of her claw, enters and disappears.
The door closes of itself and is supplied, in case of need, with a
lock consisting of a few threads.  No burglar, led astray by the
multiplicity of arches, one and all alike, will ever discover how
the fugitive vanished so suddenly.

While the Clotho displays a more simple ingenuity as regards her
defensive machinery, she is incomparably ahead of the Mygale in the
matter of domestic comfort.  Let us open her cabin.  What luxury!
We are taught how a Sybarite of old was unable to rest, owing to
the presence of a crumpled rose-leaf in his bed.  The Clotho is
quite as fastidious.  Her couch is more delicate than swan's-down
and whiter than the fleece of the clouds where brood the summer
storms.  It is the ideal blanket.  Above is a canopy or tester of
equal softness.  Between the two nestles the Spider, short-legged,
clad in sombre garments, with five yellow favours on her back.

Rest in this exquisite retreat demands perfect stability,
especially on gusty days, when sharp draughts penetrate beneath the
stone.  This condition is admirably fulfilled.  Take a careful look
at the habitation.  The arches that gird the roof with a balustrade
and bear the weight of the edifice are fixed to the slab by their
extremities.  Moreover, from each point of contact, there issues a
cluster of diverging threads that creep along the stone and cling
to it throughout their length, which spreads afar.  I have measured
some fully nine inches long.  These are so many cables; they
represent the ropes and pegs that hold the Arab's tent in position.
With such supports as these, so numerous and so methodically
arranged, the hammock cannot be torn from its bearings save by the
intervention of brutal methods with which the Spider need not
concern herself, so seldom do they occur.

Another detail attracts our attention:  whereas the interior of the
house is exquisitely clean, the outside is covered with dirt, bits
of earth, chips of rotten wood, little pieces of gravel.  Often
there are worse things still:  the exterior of the tent becomes a
charnel-house.  Here, hung up or embedded, are the dry carcasses of
Opatra, Asidae and other Tenebrionidae {39} that favour underrock
shelters; segments of Iuli, {40} bleached by the sun; shells of
Pupae, {41} common among the stones; and, lastly, Snail-shells,
selected from among the smallest.

These relics are obviously, for the most part, table-leavings,
broken victuals.  Unversed in the trapper's art, the Clotho courses
her game and lives upon the vagrants who wander from one stone to
another.  Whoso ventures under the slab at night is strangled by
the hostess; and the dried-up carcass, instead of being flung to a
distance, is hung to the silken wall, as though the Spider wished
to make a bogey-house of her home.  But this cannot be her aim.  To
act like the ogre who hangs his victims from the castle battlements
is the worst way to disarm suspicion in the passers-by whom you are
lying in wait to capture.

There are other reasons which increase our doubts.  The shells hung
up are most often empty; but there are also some occupied by the
Snail, alive and untouched.  What can the Clotho do with a Pupa
cinerea, a Pupa quadridens and other narrow spirals wherein the
animal retreats to an inaccessible depth?  The Spider is incapable
of breaking the calcareous shell or of getting at the hermit
through the opening.  Then why should she collect those prizes,
whose slimy flesh is probably not to her taste?  We begin to
suspect a simple question of ballast and balance.  The House
Spider, or Tegenaria domestica, prevents her web, spun in a corner
of the wall, from losing its shape at the least breath of air, by
loading it with crumbling plaster and allowing tiny fragments of
mortar to accumulate.  Are we face to face with a similar process?
Let us try experiment, which is preferable to any amount of
conjecture.

To rear the Clotho is not an arduous undertaking; we are not
obliged to take the heavy flagstone, on which the dwelling is
built, away with us.  A very simple operation suffices.  I loosen
the fastenings with my pocket-knife.  The Spider has such stay-at-
home ways that she very rarely makes off.  Besides, I use the
utmost discretion in my rape of the house.  And so I carry away the
building, together with its owner, in a paper bag.

The flat stones, which are too heavy to move and which would occupy
too much room upon my table, are replaced either by deal disks,
which once formed part of cheese-boxes, or by round pieces of
cardboard.  I arrange each silken hammock under one of these by
itself, fastening the angular projections, one by one, with strips
of gummed paper.  The whole stands on three short pillars and gives
a very fair imitation of the underrock shelter in the form of a
small dolmen.  Throughout this operation, if you are careful to
avoid shocks and jolts, the Spider remains indoors.  Finally, each
apparatus is placed under a wire-gauze, bell-shaped cage, which
stands in a dish filled with sand.

We can have an answer by the next morning.  If, among the cabins
swung from the ceilings of the deal or cardboard dolmens, there be
one that is all dilapidated, that was seriously knocked out of
shape at the time of removal, the Spider abandons it during the
night and instals herself elsewhere, sometimes even on the trellis-
work of the wire cage.

The new tent, the work of a few hours, attains hardly the diameter
of a two-franc piece.  It is built, however, on the same principles
as the old manor-house and consists of two thin sheets laid one
above the other, the upper one flat and forming a tester, the lower
curved and pocket-shaped.  The texture is extremely delicate:  the
least trifle would deform it, to the detriment of the available
space, which is already much reduced and only just sufficient for
the recluse.

Well, what has the Spider done to keep the gossamer stretched, to
steady it and to make it retain its greatest capacity?  Exactly
what our static treatises would advise her to do:  she has
ballasted her structure, she has done her best to lower its centre
of gravity.  From the convex surface of the pocket hang long
chaplets of grains of sand strung together with slender silken
cords.  To these sandy stalactites, which form a bushy beard, are
added a few heavy lumps hung separately and lower down, at the end
of a thread.  The whole is a piece of ballast-work, an apparatus
for ensuring equilibrium and tension.

The present edifice, hastily constructed in the space of a night,
is the frail rough sketch of what the home will afterwards become.
Successive layers will be added to it; and the partition-wall will
grow into a thick blanket capable of partly retaining, by its own
weight, the requisite curve and capacity.  The Spider now abandons
the stalactites of sand, which were used to keep the original
pocket stretched, and confines herself to dumping down on her abode
any more or less heavy object, mainly corpses of insects, because
she need not look for these and finds them ready to hand after each
meal.  They are weights, not trophies; they take the place of
materials that must otherwise be collected from a distance and
hoisted to the top.  In this way, a breastwork is obtained that
strengthens and steadies the house.  Additional equilibrium is
often supplied by tiny shells and other objects hanging a long way
down.

What would happen if one robbed an old dwelling, long since
completed, of its outer covering?  In case of such a disaster,
would the Spider go back to the sandy stalactites, as a ready means
of restoring stability?  This is easily ascertained.  In my hamlets
under wire, I select a fair-sized cabin.  I strip the exterior,
carefully removing any foreign body.  The silk reappears in its
original whiteness.  The tent looks magnificent, but seems to me
too limp.

This is also the Spider's opinion.  She sets to work, next evening,
to put things right.  And how?  Once more with hanging strings of
sand.  In a few nights, the silk bag bristles with a long, thick
beard of stalactites, a curious piece of work, excellently adapted
to maintain the web in an unvaried curve.  Even so are the cables
of a suspension-bridge steadied by the weight of the
superstructure.

Later, as the Spider goes on feeding, the remains of the victuals
are embedded in the wall, the sand is shaken and gradually drops
away and the home resumes its charnel-house appearance.  This
brings us to the same conclusion as before:  the Clotho knows her
statics; by means of additional weights, she is able to lower the
centre of gravity and thus to give her dwelling the proper
equilibrium and capacity.

Now what does she do in her softly-wadded home?  Nothing, that I
know of.  With a full stomach, her legs luxuriously stretched over
the downy carpet, she does nothing, thinks of nothing; she listens
to the sound of earth revolving on its axis.  It is not sleep,
still less is it waking; it is a middle state where naught prevails
save a dreamy consciousness of well-being.  We ourselves, when
comfortably in bed, enjoy, just before we fall asleep, a few
moments of bliss, the prelude to cessation of thought and its train
of worries; and those moments are among the sweetest in our lives.
The Clotho seems to know similar moments and to make the most of
them.

If I push open the door of the cabin, invariably I find the Spider
lying motionless, as though in endless meditation.  It needs the
teasing of a straw to rouse her from her apathy.  It needs the
prick of hunger to bring her out of doors; and, as she is extremely
temperate, her appearances outside are few and far between.  During
three years of assiduous observation, in the privacy of my study, I
have not once seen her explore the domain of the wire cage by day.
Not until a late hour at night does she venture forth in quest of
victuals; and it is hardly feasible to follow her on her
excursions.

Patience once enabled me to find her, at ten o'clock in the
evening, taking the air on the flat roof of her house, where she
was doubtless waiting for the game to pass.  Startled by the light
of my candle, the lover of darkness at once returned indoors,
refusing to reveal any of her secrets.  Only, next day, there was
one more corpse hanging from the wall of the cabin, a proof that
the chase was successfully resumed after my departure.

The Clotho, who is not only nocturnal, but also excessively shy,
conceals her habits from us; she shows us her works, those precious
historical documents, but hides her actions, especially the laying,
which I estimate approximately to take place in October.  The sum
total of the eggs is divided into five or six small, flat,
lentiform pockets, which, taken together, occupy the greater part
of the maternal home.  These capsules have each their own
partition-wall of superb white satin, but they are so closely
soldered, both together and to the floor of the house, that it is
impossible to part them without tearing them, impossible,
therefore, to obtain them separately.  The eggs in all amount to
about a hundred.

The mother sits upon the heap of pockets with the same devotion as
a brooding hen.  Maternity has not withered her.  Although
decreased in bulk, she retains an excellent look of health; her
round belly and her well-stretched skin tell us from the first that
her part is not yet wholly played.

The hatching takes place early.  November has not arrived before
the pockets contain the young:  wee things clad in black, with five
yellow specks, exactly like their elders.  The new-born do not
leave their respective nurseries.  Packed close together, they
spend the whole of the wintry season there, while the mother,
squatting on the pile of cells, watches over the general safety,
without knowing her family other than by the gentle trepidations
felt through the partitions of the tiny chambers.  The Labyrinth
Spider has shown us how she maintains a permanent sitting for two
months in her guard-room, to defend, in case of need, the brood
which she will never see.  The Clotho does the same during eight
months, thus earning the right to set eyes for a little while on
her family trotting around her in the main cabin and to assist at
the final exodus, the great journey undertaken at the end of a
thread.

When the summer heat arrives, in June, the young ones, probably
aided by their mother, pierce the walls of their cells, leave the
maternal tent, of which they know the secret outlet well, take the
air on the threshold for a few hours and then fly away, carried to
some distance by a funicular aeroplane, the first product of their
spinning-mill.

The elder Clotho remains behind, careless of this emigration which
leaves her alone.  She is far from being faded indeed, she looks
younger than ever.  Her fresh colour, her robust appearance suggest
great length of life, capable of producing a second family.  On
this subject I have but one document, a pretty far-reaching one,
however.  There were a few mothers whose actions I had the patience
to watch, despite the wearisome minutiae of the rearing and the
slowness of the result.  These abandoned their dwellings after the
departure of their young; and each went to weave a new one for
herself on the wire net-work of the cage.

They were rough-and-ready summaries, the work of a night.  Two
hangings, one above the other, the upper one flat, the lower
concave and ballasted with stalactites of grains of sand, formed
the new home, which, strengthened daily by fresh layers, promised
to become similar to the old one.  Why does the Spider desert her
former mansion, which is in no way dilapidated--far from it--and
still exceedingly serviceable, as far as one can judge?  Unless I
am mistaken, I think I have an inkling of the reason.

The old cabin, comfortably wadded though it be, possesses serious
disadvantages:  it is littered with the ruins of the children's
nurseries.  These ruins are so close-welded to the rest of the home
that my forceps cannot extract them without difficulty; and to
remove them would be an exhausting business for the Clotho and
possibly beyond her strength.  It is a case of the resistance of
Gordian knots, which not even the very spinstress who fastened them
is capable of untying.  The encumbering litter, therefore, will
remain.

If the Spider were to stay alone, the reduction of space, when all
is said, would hardly matter to her:  she wants so little room,
merely enough to move in!  Besides, when you have spent seven or
eight months in the cramping presence of those bedchambers, what
can be the reason of a sudden need for greater space?  I see but
one:  the Spider requires a roomy habitation, not for herself--she
is satisfied with the smallest den--but for a second family.  Where
is she to place the pockets of eggs, if the ruins of the previous
laying remain in the way?  A new brood requires a new home.  That,
no doubt, is why, feeling that her ovaries are not yet dried up,
the Spider shifts her quarters and founds a new establishment.

The facts observed are confined to this change of dwelling.  I
regret that other interests and the difficulties attendant upon a
long upbringing did not allow me to pursue the question and
definitely to settle the matter of the repeated layings and the
longevity of the Clotho, as I did in that of the Lycosa.

Before taking leave of this Spider, let us glance at a curious
problem which has already been set by the Lycosa's offspring.  When
carried for seven months on the mother's back, they keep in
training as agile gymnasts without taking any nourishment.  It is a
familiar exercise for them, after a fall, which frequently occurs,
to scramble up a leg of their mount and nimbly to resume their
place in the saddle.  They expend energy without receiving any
material sustenance.

The sons of the Clotho, the Labyrinth Spider and many others
confront us with the same riddle:  they move, yet do not eat.  At
any period of the nursery stage, even in the heart of winter, on
the bleak days of January, I tear the pockets of the one and the
tabernacle of the other, expecting to find the swarm of youngsters
lying in a state of complete inertia, numbed by the cold and by
lack of food.  Well, the result is quite different.  The instant
their cells are broken open, the anchorites run out and flee in
every direction as nimbly as at the best moments of their normal
liberty.  It is marvellous to see them scampering about.  No brood
of Partridges, stumbled upon by a Dog, scatters more promptly.

Chicks, while still no more than tiny balls of yellow fluff, hasten
up at the mother's call and scurry towards the plate of rice.
Habit has made us indifferent to the spectacle of those pretty
little animal machines, which work so nimbly and with such
precision; we pay no attention, so simple does it all appear to us.
Science examines and looks at things differently.  She says to
herself:

'Nothing is made with nothing.  The chick feeds itself; it consumes
or rather it assimilates and turns the food into heat, which is
converted into energy.'

Were any one to tell us of a chick which, for seven or eight months
on end, kept itself in condition for running, always fit, always
brisk, without taking the least beakful of nourishment from the day
when it left the egg, we could find no words strong enough to
express our incredulity.  Now this paradox of activity maintained
without the stay of food is realized by the Clotho Spider and
others.

I believe I have made it sufficiently clear that the young Lycosae
take no food as long as they remain with their mother.  Strictly
speaking, doubt is just admissible, for observation is needs dumb
as to what may happen earlier or later within the mysteries of the
burrow.  It seems possible that the repleted mother may there
disgorge to her family a mite of the contents of her crop.  To this
suggestion the Clotho undertakes to make reply.

Like the Lycosa, she lives with her family; but the Clotho is
separated from them by the walls of the cells in which the little
ones are hermetically enclosed.  In this condition, the
transmission of solid nourishment becomes impossible.  Should any
one entertain a theory of nutritive humours cast up by the mother
and filtering through the partitions at which the prisoners might
come and drink, the Labyrinth Spider would at once dispel the idea.
She dies a few weeks after her young are hatched; and the children,
still locked in their satin bed-chamber for the best part of the
year, are none the less active.

Can it be that they derive sustenance from the silken wrapper?  Do
they eat their house?  The supposition is not absurd, for we have
seen the Epeirae, before beginning a new web, swallow the ruins of
the old.  But the explanation cannot be accepted, as we learn from
the Lycosa, whose family boasts no silky screen.  In short, it is
certain that the young, of whatever species, take absolutely no
nourishment.

Lastly, we wonder whether they may possess within themselves
reserves that come from the egg, fatty or other matters the gradual
combustion of which would be transformed into mechanical force.  If
the expenditure of energy were of but short duration, a few hours
or a few days, we could gladly welcome this idea of a motor
viaticum, the attribute of every creature born into the world.  The
chick possesses it in a high degree:  it is steady on its legs, it
moves for a little while with the sole aid of the food wherewith
the egg furnishes it; but soon, if the stomach is not kept
supplied, the centre of energy becomes extinct and the bird dies.
How would the chick fare if it were expected, for seven or eight
months without stopping, to stand on its feet, to run about, to
flee in the face of danger?  Where would it stow the necessary
reserves for such an amount of work?

The little Spider, in her turn, is a minute particle of no size at
all.  Where could she store enough fuel to keep up mobility during
so long a period?  The imagination shrinks in dismay before the
thought of an atom endowed with inexhaustible motive oils.

We must needs, therefore, appeal to the immaterial, in particular
to heat-rays coming from the outside and converted into movement by
the organism.  This is nutrition of energy reduced to its simplest
expression:  the motive heat, instead of being extracted from the
food, is utilized direct, as supplied by the sun, which is the seat
of all life.  Inert matter has disconcerting secrets, as witness
radium; living matter has secrets of its own, which are more
wonderful still.  Nothing tells us that science will not one day
turn the suspicion suggested by the Spider into an established
truth and a fundamental theory of physiology.



APPENDIX:  THE GEOMETRY OF THE EPEIRA'S WEB



I find myself confronted with a subject which is not only highly
interesting, but somewhat difficult:  not that the subject is
obscure; but it presupposes in the reader a certain knowledge of
geometry:  a strong meat too often neglected.  I am not addressing
geometricians, who are generally indifferent to questions of
instinct, nor entomological collectors, who, as such, take no
interest in mathematical theorems; I write for any one with
sufficient intelligence to enjoy the lessons which the insect
teaches.

What am I to do?  To suppress this chapter were to leave out the
most remarkable instance of Spider industry; to treat it as it
should be treated, that is to say, with the whole armoury of
scientific formulae, would be out of place in these modest pages.
Let us take a middle course, avoiding both abstruse truths and
complete ignorance.

Let us direct our attention to the nets of the Epeirae, preferably
to those of the Silky Epeira and the Banded Epeira, so plentiful in
the autumn, in my part of the country, and so remarkable for their
bulk.  We shall first observe that the radii are equally spaced;
the angles formed by each consecutive pair are of perceptibly equal
value; and this in spite of their number, which in the case of the
Silky Epeira exceeds two score.  We know by what strange means the
Spider attains her ends and divides the area wherein the web is to
be warped into a large number of equal sectors, a number which is
almost invariable in the work of each species.  An operation
without method, governed, one might imagine, by an irresponsible
whim, results in a beautiful rose-window worthy of our compasses.

We shall also notice that, in each sector, the various chords, the
elements of the spiral windings, are parallel to one another and
gradually draw closer together as they near the centre.  With the
two radiating lines that frame them they form obtuse angles on one
side and acute angles on the other; and these angles remain
constant in the same sector, because the chords are parallel.

There is more than this:  these same angles, the obtuse as well as
the acute, do not alter in value, from one sector to another, at
any rate so far as the conscientious eye can judge.  Taken as a
whole, therefore, the rope-latticed edifice consists of a series of
cross-bars intersecting the several radiating lines obliquely at
angles of equal value.

By this characteristic we recognize the 'logarithmic spiral.'
Geometricians give this name to the curve which intersects
obliquely, at angles of unvarying value, all the straight lines or
'radii vectores' radiating from a centre called the 'Pole.'  The
Epeira's construction, therefore, is a series of chords joining the
intersections of a logarithmic spiral with a series of radii.  It
would become merged in this spiral if the number of radii were
infinite, for this would reduce the length of the rectilinear
elements indefinitely and change this polygonal line into a curve.

To suggest an explanation why this spiral has so greatly exercised
the meditations of science, let us confine ourselves for the
present to a few statements of which the reader will find the proof
in any treatise on higher geometry.

The logarithmic spiral describes an endless number of circuits
around its pole, to which it constantly draws nearer without ever
being able to reach it.  This central point is indefinitely
inaccessible at each approaching turn.  It is obvious that this
property is beyond our sensory scope.  Even with the help of the
best philosophical instruments, our sight could not follow its
interminable windings and would soon abandon the attempt to divide
the invisible.  It is a volute to which the brain conceives no
limits.  The trained mind, alone, more discerning than our retina,
sees clearly that which defies the perceptive faculties of the eye.

The Epeira complies to the best of her ability with this law of the
endless volute.  The spiral revolutions come closer together as
they approach the pole.  At a given distance, they stop abruptly;
but, at this point, the auxiliary spiral, which is not destroyed in
the central region, takes up the thread; and we see it, not without
some surprise, draw nearer to the pole in ever-narrowing and
scarcely perceptible circles.  There is not, of course, absolute
mathematical accuracy, but a very close approximation to that
accuracy.  The Epeira winds nearer and nearer round her pole, so
far as her equipment, which, like our own, is defective, will allow
her.  One would believe her to be thoroughly versed in the laws of
the spiral.

I will continue to set forth, without explanations, some of the
properties of this curious curve.  Picture a flexible thread wound
round a logarithmic spiral.  If we then unwind it, keeping it taut
the while, its free extremity will describe a spiral similar at all
points to the original.  The curve will merely have changed places.

Jacques Bernouilli, {42} to whom geometry owes this magnificent
theorem, had engraved on his tomb, as one of his proudest titles to
fame, the generating spiral and its double, begotten of the
unwinding of the thread.  An inscription proclaimed, 'Eadem mutata
resurgo:  I rise again like unto myself.'  Geometry would find it
difficult to better this splendid flight of fancy towards the great
problem of the hereafter.

There is another geometrical epitaph no less famous.  Cicero, when
quaestor in Sicily, searching for the tomb of Archimedes amid the
thorns and brambles that cover us with oblivion, recognized it,
among the ruins, by the geometrical figure engraved upon the stone:
the cylinder circumscribing the sphere.  Archimedes, in fact, was
the first to know the approximate relation of circumference to
diameter; from it he deduced the perimeter and surface of the
circle, as well as the surface and volume of the sphere.  He showed
that the surface and volume of the last-named equal two-thirds of
the surface and volume of the circumscribing cylinder.  Disdaining
all pompous inscription, the learned Syracusan honoured himself
with his theorem as his sole epitaph.  The geometrical figure
proclaimed the individual's name as plainly as would any
alphabetical characters.

To have done with this part of our subject, here is another
property of the logarithmic spiral.  Roll the curve along an
indefinite straight line.  Its pole will become displaced while
still keeping on one straight line.  The endless scroll leads to
rectilinear progression; the perpetually varied begets uniformity.

Now is this logarithmic spiral, with its curious properties, merely
a conception of the geometers, combining number and extent, at
will, so as to imagine a tenebrous abyss wherein to practise their
analytical methods afterwards?  Is it a mere dream in the night of
the intricate, an abstract riddle flung out for our understanding
to browse upon?

No, it is a reality in the service of life, a method of
construction frequently employed in animal architecture.  The
Mollusc, in particular, never rolls the winding ramp of the shell
without reference to the scientific curve.  The first-born of the
species knew it and put it into practice; it was as perfect in the
dawn of creation as it can be to-day.

Let us study, in this connection, the Ammonites, those venerable
relics of what was once the highest expression of living things, at
the time when the solid land was taking shape from the oceanic
ooze.  Cut and polished length-wise, the fossil shows a magnificent
logarithmic spiral, the general pattern of the dwelling which was a
pearl palace, with numerous chambers traversed by a siphuncular
corridor.

To this day, the last representative of the Cephalopoda with
partitioned shells, the Nautilus of the Southern Seas, remains
faithful to the ancient design; it has not improved upon its
distant predecessors.  It has altered the position of the
siphuncle, has placed it in the centre instead of leaving it on the
back, but it still whirls its spiral logarithmically as did the
Ammonites in the earliest ages of the world's existence.

And let us not run away with the idea that these princes of the
Mollusc tribe have a monopoly of the scientific curve.  In the
stagnant waters of our grassy ditches, the flat shells, the humble
Planorbes, sometimes no bigger than a duckweed, vie with the
Ammonite and the Nautilus in matters of higher geometry.  At least
one of them, Planorbis vortex, for example, is a marvel of
logarithmic whorls.

In the long-shaped shells, the structure becomes more complex,
though remaining subject to the same fundamental laws.  I have
before my eyes some species of the genus Terebra, from New
Caledonia.  They are extremely tapering cones, attaining almost
nine inches in length.  Their surface is smooth and quite plain,
without any of the usual ornaments, such as furrows, knots or
strings of pearls.  The spiral edifice is superb, graced with its
own simplicity alone.  I count a score of whorls which gradually
decrease until they vanish in the delicate point.  They are edged
with a fine groove.

I take a pencil and draw a rough generating line to this cone; and,
relying merely on the evidence of my eyes, which are more or less
practised in geometric measurements, I find that the spiral groove
intersects this generating line at an angle of unvarying value.

The consequence of this result is easily deduced.  If projected on
a plane perpendicular to the axis of the shell, the generating
lines of the cone would become radii; and the groove which winds
upwards from the base to the apex would be converted into a plane
curve which, meeting those radii at an unvarying angle, would be
neither more nor less than a logarithmic spiral.  Conversely, the
groove of the shell may be considered as the projection of this
spiral on a conic surface.

Better still.  Let us imagine a plane perpendicular to the aids of
the shell and passing through its summit.  Let us imagine,
moreover, a thread wound along the spiral groove.  Let us unroll
the thread, holding it taut as we do so.  Its extremity will not
leave the plane and will describe a logarithmic spiral within it.
It is, in a more complicated degree, a variant of Bernouilli's
'Eadem mutata resurgo:' the logarithmic conic curve becomes a
logarithmic plane curve.

A similar geometry is found in the other shells with elongated
cones, Turritellae, Spindle-shells, Cerithia, as well as in the
shells with flattened cones, Trochidae, Turbines.  The spherical
shells, those whirled into a volute, are no exception to this rule.
All, down to the common Snail-shell, are constructed according to
logarithmic laws.  The famous spiral of the geometers is the
general plan followed by the Mollusc rolling its stone sheath.

Where do these glairy creatures pick up this science?  We are told
that the Mollusc derives from the Worm.  One day, the Worm,
rendered frisky by the sun, emancipated itself, brandished its tail
and twisted it into a corkscrew for sheer glee.  There and then the
plan of the future spiral shell was discovered.

This is what is taught quite seriously, in these days, as the very
last word in scientific progress.  It remains to be seen up to what
point the explanation is acceptable.  The Spider, for her part,
will have none of it.  Unrelated to the appendix-lacking,
corkscrew-twirling Worm, she is nevertheless familiar with the
logarithmic spiral.  From the celebrated curve she obtains merely a
sort of framework; but, elementary though this framework be, it
clearly marks the ideal edifice.  The Epeira works on the same
principles as the Mollusc of the convoluted shell.

The Mollusc has years wherein to construct its spiral and it uses
the utmost finish in the whirling process.  The Epeira, to spread
her net, has but an hour's sitting at the most, wherefore the speed
at which she works compels her to rest content with a simpler
production.  She shortens the task by confining herself to a
skeleton of the curve which the other describes to perfection.

The Epeira, therefore, is versed in the geometric secrets of the
Ammonite and the Nautilus pompilus; she uses, in a simpler form,
the logarithmic line dear to the Snail.  What guides her?  There is
no appeal here to a wriggle of some kind, as in the case of the
Worm that ambitiously aspires to become a Mollusc.  The animal must
needs carry within itself a virtual diagram of its spiral.
Accident, however fruitful in surprises we may presume it to be,
can never have taught it the higher geometry wherein our own
intelligence at once goes astray, without a strict preliminary
training.

Are we to recognize a mere effect of organic structure in the
Epeira's art?  We readily think of the legs, which, endowed with a
very varying power of extension, might serve as compasses.  More or
less bent, more or less outstretched, they would mechanically
determine the angle whereat the spiral shall intersect the radius;
they would maintain the parallel of the chords in each sector.

Certain objections arise to affirm that, in this instance, the tool
is not the sole regulator of the work.  Were the arrangement of the
thread determined by the length of the legs, we should find the
spiral volutes separated more widely from one another in proportion
to the greater length of implement in the spinstress.  We see this
in the Banded Epeira and the Silky Epeira.  The first has longer
limbs and spaces her cross-threads more liberally than does the
second, whose legs are shorter.

But we must not rely too much on this rule, say others.  The
Angular Epeira, the Paletinted Epeira and the Cross Spider, all
three more or less short-limbed, rival the Banded Epeira in the
spacing of their lime-snares.  The last two even dispose them with
greater intervening distances.

We recognize in another respect that the organization of the animal
does not imply an immutable type of work.  Before beginning the
sticky spiral, the Epeirae first spin an auxiliary intended to
strengthen the stays.  This spiral, formed of plain, non-glutinous
thread, starts from the centre and winds in rapidly-widening
circles to the circumference.  It is merely a temporary
construction, whereof naught but the central part survives when the
Spider has set its limy meshes.  The second spiral, the essential
part of the snare, proceeds, on the contrary, in serried coils from
the circumference to the centre and is composed entirely of viscous
cross-threads.

Here we have, following one after the other merely by a sudden
alteration of the machine, two volutes of an entirely different
order as regards direction, the number of whorls and intersection.
Both of them are logarithmic spirals.  I see no mechanism of the
legs, be they long or short, that can account for this alteration.

Can it then be a premeditated design on the part of the Epeira?
Can there be calculation, measurement of angles, gauging of the
parallel by means of the eye or otherwise?  I am inclined to think
that there is none of all this, or at least nothing but an innate
propensity, whose effects the animal is no more able to control
than the flower is able to control the arrangement of its
verticils.  The Epeira practises higher geometry without knowing or
caring.  The thing works of itself and takes its impetus from an
instinct imposed upon creation from the start.

The stone thrown by the hand returns to earth describing a certain
curve; the dead leaf torn and wafted away by a breath of wind makes
its journey from the tree to the ground with a similar curve.  On
neither the one side nor the other is there any action by the
moving body to regulate the fall; nevertheless, the descent takes
place according to a scientific trajectory, the 'parabola,' of
which the section of a cone by a plane furnished the prototype to
the geometer's speculations.  A figure, which was at first but a
tentative glimpse, becomes a reality by the fall of a pebble out of
the vertical.

The same speculations take up the parabola once more, imagine it
rolling on an indefinite straight line and ask what course does the
focus of this curve follow.  The answer comes:  The focus of the
parabola describes a 'catenary,' a line very simple in shape, but
endowed with an algebraic symbol that has to resort to a kind of
cabalistic number at variance with any sort of numeration, so much
so that the unit refuses to express it, however much we subdivide
the unit.  It is called the number e.  Its value is represented by
the following series carried out ad infinitum:


e = 1 + 1/1 + 1/(1*2) + 1/(1*2*3) + 1/(1*2*3*4) + 1/(1*2*3*4*5) +
etc


If the reader had the patience to work out the few initial terms of
this series, which has no limit, because the series of natural
numerals itself has none, he would find:


e=2.7182818...


With this weird number are we now stationed within the strictly
defined realm of the imagination?  Not at all:  the catenary
appears actually every time that weight and flexibility act in
concert.  The name is given to the curve formed by a chain
suspended by two of its points which are not placed on a vertical
line.  It is the shape taken by a flexible cord when held at each
end and relaxed; it is the line that governs the shape of a sail
bellying in the wind; it is the curve of the nanny-goat's milk-bag
when she returns from filling her trailing udder.  And all this
answers to the number e.

What a quantity of abstruse science for a bit of string!  Let us
not be surprised.  A pellet of shot swinging at the end of a
thread, a drop of dew trickling down a straw, a splash of water
rippling under the kisses of the air, a mere trifle, after all,
requires a titanic scaffolding when we wish to examine it with the
eye of calculation.  We need the club of Hercules to crush a fly.

Our methods of mathematical investigation are certainly ingenious;
we cannot too much admire the mighty brains that have invented
them; but how slow and laborious they appear when compared with the
smallest actualities!  Will it never be given to us to probe
reality in a simpler fashion?  Will our intelligence be able one
day to dispense with the heavy arsenal of formulae?  Why not?

Here we have the abracadabric number e reappearing, inscribed on a
Spider's thread.  Let us examine, on a misty morning, the meshwork
that has been constructed during the night.  Owing to their
hygrometrical nature, the sticky threads are laden with tiny drops,
and, bending under the burden, have become so many catenaries, so
many chaplets of limpid gems, graceful chaplets arranged in
exquisite order and following the curve of a swing.  If the sun
pierce the mist, the whole lights up with iridescent fires and
becomes a resplendent cluster of diamonds.  The number e is in its
glory.

Geometry, that is to say, the science of harmony in space, presides
over everything.  We find it in the arrangement of the scales of a
fir-cone, as in the arrangement of an Epeira's limy web; we find it
in the spiral of a Snail-shell, in the chaplet of a Spider's
thread, as in the orbit of a planet; it is everywhere, as perfect
in the world of atoms as in the world of immensities.

And this universal geometry tells us of an Universal Geometrician,
whose divine compass has measured all things.  I prefer that, as an
explanation of the logarithmic curve of the Ammonite and the
Epeira, to the Worm screwing up the tip of its tail.  It may not
perhaps be in accordance with latter-day teaching, but it takes a
loftier flight.



Footnotes:

{1}  A small or moderate-sized spider found among foliage.--
Translator's Note.

{2}  Leon Dufour (1780-1865) was an army surgeon who served with
distinction in several campaigns and subsequently practised as a
doctor in the Landes.  He attained great eminence as a naturalist.-
-Translator's Note.

{3}  The Tarantula is a Lycosa, or Wolf-spider.  Fabre's Tarantula,
the Black-bellied Tarantula, is identical with the Narbonne Lycosa,
under which name the description is continued in Chapters iii. to
vi., all of which were written at a considerably later date than
the present chapter.--Translator's Note.

{4}  Giorgio Baglivi (1669-1707), professor of anatomy and medicine
at Rome.--Translator's Note.

{5}  'When our husbandmen wish to catch them, they approach their
hiding-places, and play on a thin grass pipe, making a sound not
unlike the humming of bees.  Hearing which, the Tarantula rushes
out fiercely that she may catch the flies or other insects of this
kind, whose buzzing she thinks it to be; but she herself is caught
by her rustic trapper.'

{6}  Provencal for the bit of waste ground on which the author
studies his insects in the natural state.--Translator's note.

{7}  'Thanks to the Bumble-bee.'

{8}  Like the Dung-beetles.--Translator's Note.

{9}  Like the Solitary Wasps.--Translator's Note.

{10}  Such as the Hairy Ammophila, the Cerceris and the
Languedocian Sphex, Digger-wasps described in other of the author's
essays.--Translator's Note.

{11}  The desnucador, the Argentine slaughterman whose methods of
slaying cattle are detailed in the author's essay entitled, The
Theory of Instinct.--Translator's Note.

{12}  A family of Grasshoppers.--Translator's Note.

{13}  A genus of Beetles.--Translator's Note.

{14}  A species of Digger-wasp.--Translator's Note.

{15}  The Cicada is the Cigale, an insect akin to the Grasshopper
and found more particularly in the South of France.--Translator's
Note.

{16}  The generic title of the work from which these essays are
taken is Entomological Memories, or, Studies relating to the
Instinct and Habits of Insects.--Translator's Note.

{17} A species of Grasshopper.--Translator's Note.

{18}  An insect akin to the Locusts and Crickets, which, when at
rest, adopts an attitude resembling that of prayer.  When
attacking, it assumes what is known as 'the spectral attitude.'
Its forelegs form a sort of saw-like or barbed harpoons.  Cf.
Social Life in the Insect World, by J. H. Fabre, translated by
Bernard Miall:  chaps. v. to vii.-  Translator's Note.

{19}  .39 inch.-- Translator's Note.

{20}  These experiments are described in the author's essay on the
Mason Bees entitled Fragments on Insect Psychology.--Translator's
Note.

{21}  A species of Wasp.--Translator's Note.

{22}  In Chap. VIII. of the present volume.--Translator's Note.

{23}  Jules Michelet (1798-1874), author of L'Oiseau and L'Insecte,
in addition to the historical works for which he is chiefly known.
As a lad, he helped his father, a printer by trade, in setting
type.--Translator's Note.

{24}  Chapter III. of the present volume.--Translator's Note.

{25}  A species of Dung-beetle.  Cf.  The Life and Love of the
Insect, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de
Mattos:  chap. v.--Translator's Note.

{26}  A species of Beetle.--Translator's Note.

{27}  Cf. Insect Life, by J. H. Fabre, translated by the author of
Mademoiselle Mori:  chaps. i. and ii.; The Life and Love of the
Insect, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de
Mattos:  chaps. i. to iv.--Translator's Note.

{28}  Chapter II.--Translator's Note.

{29}  .39 inch.--Translator's Note.

{30}  The Processionaries are Moth-caterpillars that feed on
various leaves and march in file, laying a silken trail as they
go.--Translator's Note.

{31}  The weekly half-holiday in French schools.--Translator's
Note.

{32}  Cf. Social Life in the Insect World, by J. H. Fabre,
translated by Bernard Miall:  chap. xiv.--Translator's Note.

{33}  Cf. Insect Life, by J. H. Fabre, translated by the author of
Mademoiselle Mori:  chap. v.--Translator's Note.

{34}  The Scolia is a Digger-wasp, like the Cerceris and the Sphex,
and feeds her larvae on the grubs of the Cetonia, or Rose-chafer,
and the Oryctes, or Rhinoceros Beetle.  Cf. The Life and Love of
the Insect, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de
Mattos:  chap. xi.--Translator's Note.

{35}  Cf. Social Life in the Insect World, by J. H. Fabre,
translated by Bernard Miall. chap. xiii., in which the name is
given, by a printer's error, as Philanthus aviporus.--Translator's
Note.

{36}  Or Bird Spiders, known also as the American Tarantula.--
Translator's Note.

{37}  .059 inch.--Translator's Note.

{38}  The Ichneumon-flies are very small insects which carry long
ovipositors, wherewith they lay their eggs in the eggs of other
insects and also, more especially, in caterpillars.  Their
parasitic larvae live and develop at the expense of the egg or grub
attacked, which degenerates in consequence.--Translator's Note.

{39}  One of the largest families of Beetles, darkish in colour and
shunning the light.--Translator's Note.

{40}  The Iulus is one of the family of Myriapods, which includes
Centipedes, etc.--Translator's Note.

{41}  A species of Land-snail.--Translator's Note.

{42}  Jacques Bernouilli (1654-1705), professor of mathematics at
the University of Basel from 1687 to the year of his death.  He
improved the differential calculus, solved the isoperimetrical
problem and discovered the properties of the logarithmic spiral.--
Translator's Note.





End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre

