o live, we have to
descend, often very low, alas! The Crested Lark crumbles the
mule-droppings in the road and thus picks up his food, the oaten grain
which he would never find by soaring in the sky, his throat swollen with
song. We have to descend; the stomach's inexorable claims demand it. The
Spiderling, therefore, touches land. Gravity, tempered by the parachute,
is kind to her.

The rest of her story escapes me. What infinitely tiny Midges does she
capture before possessing the strength to stab her Bee? What are the
methods, what the wiles of atom contending with atom? I know not. We
shall find her again in spring, grown quite large and crouching among the
flowers whence the Bee takes toll.

CHAPTER IX: THE GARDEN SPIDERS: BUILDING THE WEB

The fowling-snare is one of man's ingenious villainies. With lines, pegs
and poles, two large, earth-coloured nets are stretched upon the ground,
one to the right, the other to the left of a bare surface. A long cord,
pulled, at the right moment, by the fowler, who hides in a brushwood hut,
works them and brings them together suddenly, like a pair of shutters.

Divided between the two nets are the cages of the decoy-birds--Linnets
and Chaffinches, Greenfinches and Yellowhammers, Buntings and
Ortolans--sharp-eared creatures which, on perceiving the distant passage
of a flock of their own kind, forthwith utter a short calling note. One
of them, the _Sambe_, an irresistible tempter, hops about and flaps his
wings in apparent freedom. A bit of twine fastens him to his convict's
stake. When, worn with fatigue and driven desperate by his vain attempts
to get away, the sufferer lies down flat and refuses to do his duty, the
fowler is able to stimulate him without stirring from his hut. A long
string sets in motion a little lever working on a pivot. Raised from the
ground by this diabolical contrivance, the bird flies, falls down and
flies up again at each jerk of the cord.

The fowler waits, in the mild sunlight of the autumn morning. Suddenly,
great excitement in the cages. The Chaffinches chirp their rallying-cry:

'Pinck! Pinck!'

There is something happening in the sky. The _Sambe_, quick! They are
coming, the simpletons; they swoop down upon the treacherous floor. With
a rapid movement, the man in ambush pulls his string. The nets close and
the whole flock is caught.

Man has wild beast's blood in his veins. The fowler hastens to the
slaught