lets him have his way. She does not run up the shrouds of the
mast-work to seize the desperate prisoner; she waits until his bonds of
threads, twisted backwards and forwards, make him fall on the web.

He falls; the other comes and flings herself upon her prostrate prey. The
attack is not without danger. The Locust is demoralized rather than tied
up; it is merely bits of broken thread that he is trailing from his legs.
The bold assailant does not mind. Without troubling, like the Epeirae,
to bury her capture under a paralysing winding-sheet, she feels it, to
make sure of its quality, and then, regardless of kicks, inserts her
fangs.

The bite is usually given at the lower end of a haunch: not that this
place is more vulnerable than any other thin-skinned part, but probably
because it has a better flavour. The different webs which I inspect to
study the food in the larder show me, among other joints, various Flies
and small Butterflies and carcasses of almost-untouched Locusts, all
deprived of their hind-legs, or at least of one. Locusts' legs often
dangle, emptied of their succulent contents, on the edges of the web,
from the meat-hooks of the butcher's shop. In my urchin-days, days free
from prejudices in regard to what one ate, I, like many others, was able
to appreciate that dainty. It is the equivalent, on a very small scale,
of the larger legs of the Crayfish.

The rigging-builder, therefore, to whom we have just thrown a Locust
attacks the prey at the lower end of a thigh. The bite is a lingering
one: once the Spider has planted her fangs, she does not let go. She
drinks, she sips, she sucks. When this first point is drained, she
passes on to others, to the second haunch in particular, until the prey
becomes an empty hulk without losing its outline.

We have seen that Garden Spiders feed in a similar way, bleeding their
venison and drinking it instead of eating it. At last, however, in the
comfortable post-prandial hours, they take up the drained morsel, chew
it, rechew it and reduce it to a shapeless ball. It is a dessert for the
teeth to toy with. The Labyrinth Spider knows nothing of the diversions
of the table; she flings the drained remnants out of her web, without
chewing them. Although it lasts long, the meal is eaten in perfect
safety. From the first bite, the Locust becomes a lifeless thing; the
Spider's poison has settled him.

The labyrinth is greatly inferior, as a work of art, to t