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