ider would take refuge
in her hours of leisure. The reality is something entirely different.
The long funnel-neck gapes at its lower end, where a private door stands
always ajar, allowing the animal, when hard-pushed, to escape through the
grass and gain the open.

It is well to know this arrangement of the home, if you wish to capture
the Spider without hurting her. When attacked from the front, the
fugitive runs down and slips through the postern-gate at the bottom. To
look for her by rummaging in the brushwood often leads to nothing, so
swift is her flight; besides, a blind search entails a great risk of
maiming her. Let us eschew violence, which is but seldom successful, and
resort to craft.

We catch sight of the Spider at the entrance to her tube. If
practicable, squeeze the bottom of the tuft, containing the neck of the
funnel, with both hands. That is enough; the animal is caught. Feeling
its retreat cut off, it readily darts into the paper bag held out to it;
if necessary, it can be stimulated with a bit of straw. In this way, I
fill my cages with subjects that have not been demoralized by contusions.

The surface of the crater is not exactly a snare. It is just possible
for the casual pedestrian to catch his legs in the silky carpets; but
giddy-pates who come here for a walk must be very rare. What is wanted
is a trap capable of securing the game that hops or flies. The Epeira
has her treacherous limed net; the Spider of the bushes has her no less
treacherous labyrinth.

Look above the web. What a forest of ropes! It might be the rigging of
a ship disabled by a storm. They run from every twig of the supporting
shrubs, they are fastened to the tip of every branch. There are long
ropes and short ropes, upright and slanting, straight and bent, taut and
slack, all criss-cross and a-tangle, to the height of three feet or so in
inextricable disorder. The whole forms a chaos of netting, a labyrinth
which none can pass through, unless he be endowed with wings of
exceptional power.

We have here nothing similar to the lime-threads used by the Garden
Spiders. The threads are not sticky; they act only by their confused
multitude. Would you care to see the trap at work? Throw a small Locust
into the rigging. Unable to obtain a steady foothold on that shaky
support, he flounders about; and the more he struggles the more he
entangles his shackles. The Spider, spying on the threshold of her
abyss,