ncessantly, by means of feeding, fill her silk-glands as and when she
empties them by spinning. Food is the means whereby she keeps the
inexhaustible factory going.

A month passes and, about the middle of September, the little ones hatch,
but without leaving their tabernacle, where they are to spend the winter
packed in soft wadding. The mother continues to watch and spin,
lessening her activity from day to day. She recruits herself with a
Locust at longer intervals; she sometimes scorns those whom I myself
entangle in her trap. This increasing abstemiousness, a sign of
decrepitude, slackens and at last stops the work of the spinnerets.

For four or five weeks longer, the mother never ceases her leisurely
inspection-rounds, happy at hearing the new-born Spiders swarming in the
wallet. At length, when October ends, she clutches her offspring's
nursery and dies withered. She has done all that maternal devotion can
do; the special providence of tiny animals will do the rest. When spring
comes, the youngsters will emerge from their snug habitation, disperse
all over the neighbourhood by the expedient of the floating thread and
weave their first attempts at a labyrinth on the tufts of thyme.

Accurate in structure and neat in silk-work though they be, the nests of
the caged captives do not tell us everything; we must go back to what
happens in the fields, with their complicated conditions. Towards the
end of December, I again set out in search, aided by all my youthful
collaborators. We inspect the stunted rosemaries along the edge of a
path sheltered by a rocky, wooded slope; we lift the branches that spread
over the ground. Our zeal is rewarded with success. In a couple of
hours, I am the owner of some nests.

Pitiful pieces of work are they, injured beyond recognition by the
assaults of the weather! It needs the eyes of faith to see in these
ruins the equivalent of the edifices built inside my cages. Fastened to
the creeping branch, the unsightly bundle lies on the sand heaped up by
the rains. Oak-leaves, roughly joined by a few threads, wrap it all
round. One of these leaves, larger than the others, roofs it in and
serves as a scaffolding for the whole of the ceiling. If we did not see
the silky remnants of the two vestibules projecting and feel a certain
resistance when separating the parts of the bundle, we might take the
thing for a casual accumulation, the work of the rain and the wind.

Let us e