see
it; she is all unwitting. A good hour passes, with the Locust still
kicking, the Spider impassive, myself watching. Nevertheless, in the
end, the Epeira wakes up: no longer feeling the signalling-thread, broken
by my scissors, as taut as usual under her legs, she comes to look into
the state of things. The web is reached, without the least difficulty,
by one of the lines of the framework, the first that offers. The Locust
is then perceived and forthwith enswathed, after which the signalling-
thread is remade, taking the place of the one which I have broken. Along
this road the Spider goes home, dragging her prey behind her.

My neighbour, the mighty Angular Epeira, with her telegraph-wire nine
feet long, has even better things in store for me. One morning, I find
her web, which is now deserted, almost intact, a proof that the night's
hunting has not been good. The animal must be hungry. With a piece of
game for a bait, I hope to bring her down from her lofty retreat.

I entangle in the web a rare morsel, a Dragon-fly, who struggles
desperately and sets the whole net a-shaking. The other, up above,
leaves her lurking-place amid the cypress-foliage, strides swiftly down
along her telegraph-wire, comes to the Dragon-fly, trusses her and at
once climbs home again by the same road, with her prize dangling at her
heels by a thread. The final sacrifice will take place in the quiet of
the leafy sanctuary.

A few days later, I renew my experiment under the same conditions, but,
this time, I first cut the signalling-thread. In vain I select a large
Dragon-fly, a very restless prisoner; in vain I exert my patience: the
Spider does not come down all day. Her telegraph being broken, she
receives no notice of what is happening nine feet below. The entangled
morsel remains where it lies, not despised, but unknown. At nightfall,
the Epeira leaves her cabin, passes over the ruins of her web, finds the
Dragon-fly and eats her on the spot, after which the net is renewed.

One of the Epeirae whom I have had the opportunity of examining
simplifies the system, while retaining the essential mechanism of a
transmission-thread. This is the Crater Epeira (_Epeira cratera_,
WALCK.), a species seen in spring, at which time she indulges especially
in the chase of the Domestic Bee, upon the flowering rosemaries. At the
leafy end of a branch, she builds a sort of silken shell, the shape and
size of an acorn-cup. This is where