rt a thin straw into the burrow and move it about. Uneasy as
to what is happening above, the recluse hastens to climb up and stops, in
a threatening attitude, at some distance from the orifice. You see her
eight eyes gleaming like diamonds in the dark; you see her powerful
poison-fangs yawning, ready to bite. He who is not accustomed to the
sight of this horror, rising from under the ground, cannot suppress a
shiver. B-r-r-r-r! Let us leave the beast alone.

Chance, a poor stand-by, sometimes contrives very well. At the beginning
of the month of August, the children call me to the far side of the
enclosure, rejoicing in a find which they have made under the rosemary-
bushes. It is a magnificent Lycosa, with an enormous belly, the sign of
an impending delivery.

The obese Spider is gravely devouring something in the midst of a circle
of onlookers. And what? The remains of a Lycosa a little smaller than
herself, the remains of her male. It is the end of the tragedy that
concludes the nuptials. The sweetheart is eating her lover. I allow the
matrimonial rites to be fulfilled in all their horror; and, when the last
morsel of the unhappy wretch has been scrunched up, I incarcerate the
terrible matron under a cage standing in an earthen pan filled with sand.

Early one morning, ten days later, I find her preparing for her
confinement. A silk network is first spun on the ground, covering an
extent about equal to the palm of one's hand. It is coarse and
shapeless, but firmly fixed. This is the floor on which the Spider means
to operate.

On this foundation, which acts as a protection from the sand, the Lycosa
fashions a round mat, the size of a two-franc piece and made of superb
white silk. With a gentle, uniform movement, which might be regulated by
the wheels of a delicate piece of clockwork, the tip of the abdomen rises
and falls, each time touching the supporting base a little farther away,
until the extreme scope of the mechanism is attained.

Then, without the Spider's moving her position, the oscillation is
resumed in the opposite direction. By means of this alternate motion,
interspersed with numerous contacts, a segment of the sheet is obtained,
of a very accurate texture. When this is done, the Spider moves a little
along a circular line and the loom works in the same manner on another
segment.

The silk disk, a sort of hardly concave paten, now no longer receives
aught from the spinnerets in i