ug 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