you are lying in wait to capture.

There are other reasons which increase our doubts. The shells hung up
are most often empty; but there are also some occupied by the Snail,
alive and untouched. What can the Clotho do with a _Pupa cinerea_, a
_Pupa quadridens_ and other narrow spirals wherein the animal retreats to
an inaccessible depth? The Spider is incapable of breaking the
calcareous shell or of getting at the hermit through the opening. Then
why should she collect those prizes, whose slimy flesh is probably not to
her taste? We begin to suspect a simple question of ballast and balance.
The House Spider, or _Tegenaria domestica_, prevents her web, spun in a
corner of the wall, from losing its shape at the least breath of air, by
loading it with crumbling plaster and allowing tiny fragments of mortar
to accumulate. Are we face to face with a similar process? Let us try
experiment, which is preferable to any amount of conjecture.

To rear the Clotho is not an arduous undertaking; we are not obliged to
take the heavy flagstone, on which the dwelling is built, away with us. A
very simple operation suffices. I loosen the fastenings with my pocket-
knife. The Spider has such stay-at-home ways that she very rarely makes
off. Besides, I use the utmost discretion in my rape of the house. And
so I carry away the building, together with its owner, in a paper bag.

The flat stones, which are too heavy to move and which would occupy too
much room upon my table, are replaced either by deal disks, which once
formed part of cheese-boxes, or by round pieces of cardboard. I arrange
each silken hammock under one of these by itself, fastening the angular
projections, one by one, with strips of gummed paper. The whole stands
on three short pillars and gives a very fair imitation of the underrock
shelter in the form of a small dolmen. Throughout this operation, if you
are careful to avoid shocks and jolts, the Spider remains indoors.
Finally, each apparatus is placed under a wire-gauze, bell-shaped cage,
which stands in a dish filled with sand.

We can have an answer by the next morning. If, among the cabins swung
from the ceilings of the deal or cardboard dolmens, there be one that is
all dilapidated, that was seriously knocked out of shape at the time of
removal, the Spider abandons it during the night and instals herself
elsewhere, sometimes even on the trellis-work of the wire cage.

The new tent, the work of a fe