n, wherein the Crickets delight. In the torrid heats of the dog-
days, therefore, the lime-threads, but for special provisions, would be
liable to dry up, to shrivel into stiff and lifeless filaments. But the
very opposite happens. At the most scorching times of the day, they
continue supple, elastic and more and more adhesive.

How is this brought about? By their very powers of absorption. The
moisture of which the air is never deprived penetrates them slowly; it
dilutes the thick contents of their tubes to the requisite degree and
causes it to ooze through, as and when the earlier stickiness decreases.
What bird-catcher could vie with the Garden Spider in the art of laying
lime-snares? And all this industry and cunning for the capture of a
Moth!

Then, too, what a passion for production! Knowing the diameter of the
orb and the number of coils, we can easily calculate the total length of
the sticky spiral. We find that, in one sitting, each time that she
remakes her web, the Angular Epeira produces some twenty yards of gummy
thread. The more skilful Silky Epeira produces thirty. Well, during two
months, the Angular Epeira, my neighbour, renewed her snare nearly every
evening. During that period, she manufactured something like
three-quarters of a mile of this tubular thread, rolled into a tight
twist and bulging with glue.

I should like an anatomist endowed with better implements than mine and
with less tired eyesight to explain to us the work of the marvellous rope-
yard. How is the silky matter moulded into a capillary tube? How is
this tube filled with glue and tightly twisted? And how does this same
wire-mill also turn out plain threads, wrought first into a framework and
then into muslin and satin; next, a russet foam, such as fills the wallet
of the Banded Epeira; next, the black stripes stretched in meridian
curves on that same wallet? What a number of products to come from that
curious factory, a Spider's belly! I behold the results, but fail to
understand the working of the machine. I leave the problem to the
masters of the microtome and the scalpel.

CHAPTER XII: THE GARDEN SPIDERS: THE TELEGRAPH-WIRE

Of the six Garden Spiders that form the object of my observations, two
only, the Banded and the silky Epeira, remain constantly in their webs,
even under the blinding rays of a fierce sun. The others, as a rule, do
not show themselves until nightfall. At some distance from the ne