The Life of the Spider 



shakes, all the others are more or less affected. 

 This is enough to distract the layer from her 

 business and to make her do silly things. 

 Here are two instances. 



A bag has been woven during the night. 

 I find it, when I visit the cage in the morning, 

 hanging from the trellis-work and completed. 

 It is perfect, as regards structure; it is deco- 

 rated with the regulation black meridian 

 curves. There is nothing missing, nothing 

 except the essential thing, the eggs, for which 

 the spinstress has gone to such expense in the 

 matter of silks. Where are the eggs? They 

 are not in the bag, which I open and find 

 empty. They are lying on the ground below, 

 on the sand in the pan, utterly unprotected. 



Disturbed at the moment of discharging 

 them, the mother has missed the mouth of the 

 little bag and dropped them on the floor. 

 Perhaps even, in her excitement, she came 

 down from above and, compelled by the ex- 

 igencies of the ovaries, laid her eggs on the 

 first support that offered. No matter: if her 

 Spider brain contains the least gleam of sense, 

 she must be aware of the disaster and is there- 

 fore bound at once to abandon the elaborate 

 manufacture of a now superfluous nest. 



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