The Life of the Spider 



ably to the necessary extension of the legs at 

 the moment when the prey is to be seized. 

 The shaft is composed mainly of bits of dry 

 wood joined by a little clay and so artistically 

 laid, one above the other, that they form the 

 scaffolding of a straight column, the inside 

 of which is a hollow cylinder. The solidity 

 of this tubular building, of this outwork, is 

 ensured above all by the fact that it is lined, 

 upholstered within, with a texture woven 

 by the Lycosa's 1 spinnerets and continued 

 throughout the interior of the burrow. It is 

 easy to imagine how useful this cleverly- 

 manufactured lining must be for preventing 

 landslip or warping, for maintaining clean- 

 liness and for helping her claws to scale the 

 fortress. 



'I hinted that this outwork of the burrow 

 was not there invariably; as a matter of fact, 

 I have often come across Tarantulas' holes 

 without a trace of it, perhaps because it 

 had been accidentally destroyed by the 

 weather, or because the Lycosa may not al- 



1 The Tarantula is a Lycosa, or Wolf-spider Fabre's 

 Tarantula, the Black-bellied Tarantula, is identical with 

 the Narbonne Lycosa, under which name the description 

 is continued in Chapters in. to vi., all of which were 

 written at a considerably later date than the present 

 chapter. — Translator's Note. 



44 



