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
dat