THE 



FIELD NATURALIST 



THE ZEBRA SPIDER (Epeirafasciata, FABRICIUS). 



[ With a coloured figure of the female and her nest of eggs, drawn from, the Editor' 



specimen.] 



BY THE EDITOR. 



WHEN I resided in Normandy, in 1829, the rugged cliffs at Cape 

 La Heve formed my favourite spot for field excursions, and I seldom 

 went thither, without meeting with something new or interesting, 

 though I had repeatedly traversed every foot of the ground that was 

 accessible. Geological fossils of the oolitic series, plants, shells, insects, 

 reptiles, and birds alternately attracted my attention, and furnished 

 me with numerous facts, which I might in vain have searched for in 

 books of Natural History. This very shore, indeed, had previously 

 been perambulated by two distinguished native naturalists ; but 

 St. Pierre seldom condescended, in the midst of his excursive fancies, 

 to look at the more minute facts ; and Deterville, though a sufficiently 

 minute observer, had no idea of generalising ; while it is more con- 

 genial to my turn of mind to combine these extremes, observing 

 minutely to obtain facts, and bringing these facts to bear on some 

 general inference, or some philosophic induction. 



In one of my excursions to Cape La Heve, towards the end of 

 summer, I had clambered high up on the grassy escarpment, in pursuit 

 of a butterfly, and, in order to reach the path along the sbore at the base 

 of the cliff, I was compelled to make my way through a thicket of 

 brambles and blackthorn, mid-way down the slope. A field naturalist, 

 in such cases, is rarely out of his way. In an opening among the 

 brambles, I remarked a spider's web, of unusual dimensions and 

 texture, with geometrical meshes, but these far too wide to have been 



VOL. n. NO. ii. (FEBRUARY, 1834.) i 



