er. With his thumb, he stifles the beating of the captives'
hearts, staves in their skulls. The little birds, so many piteous heads
of game, will go to market, strung in dozens on a wire passed through
their nostrils.

For scoundrelly ingenuity the Epeira's net can bear comparison with the
fowler's; it even surpasses it when, on patient study, the main features
of its supreme perfection stand revealed. What refinement of art for a
mess of Flies! Nowhere, in the whole animal kingdom, has the need to eat
inspired a more cunning industry. If the reader will meditate upon the
description that follows, he will certainly share my admiration.

First of all, we must witness the making of the net; we must see it
constructed and see it again and again, for the plan of such a complex
work can only be grasped in fragments. To-day, observation will give us
one detail; to-morrow, it will give us a second, suggesting fresh points
of view; as our visits multiply, a new fact is each time added to the sum
total of the acquired data, confirming those which come before or
directing our thoughts along unsuspected paths.

The snow-ball rolling over the carpet of white grows enormous, however
scanty each fresh layer be. Even so with truth in observational science:
it is built up of trifles patiently gathered together. And, while the
collecting of these trifles means that the student of Spider industry
must not be chary of his time, at least it involves no distant and
speculative research. The smallest garden contains Epeirae, all
accomplished weavers.

In my enclosure, which I have stocked carefully with the most famous
breeds, I have six different species under observation, all of a useful
size, all first-class spinners. Their names are the Banded Epeira
(_Epeira fasciata_, WALCK.), the Silky Epeira (_E. sericea_, WALCK.), the
Angular Epeira (_E. angulata_, WALCK.), the Pale-tinted Epeira (_E.
pallida_, OLIV.), the Diadem Epeira, or Cross Spider (_E. diadema_,
CLERK.), and the Crater Epeira (_E. cratera_, WALCK.).

I am able, at the proper hours, all through the fine season, to question
them, to watch them at work, now this one, anon that, according to the
chances of the day. What I did not see very plainly yesterday I can see
the next day, under better conditions, and on any of the following days,
until the phenomenon under observation is revealed in all clearness.

Let us go every evening, step by step, from one border of t