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. {19}  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