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