The Life of the Spider 



dispersal presents no difficulties. Each emi- 

 grant leaves at his own good time and travels 

 as suits him best. 



My devices have changed these conditions 

 somewhat. My two bristling poles stand at a 

 distance from the surrounding shrubs, espe- 

 cially the one which I planted in the middle 

 of the yard. Bridges are out of the question, 

 for the threads flung into the air are not long 

 enough. And so the acrobats, eager to get 

 away, keep on climbing, never come down 

 again, are impelled to seek in a higher posi- 

 tion what they have failed to find in a lower. 

 The top of my two bamboos probably fails to 

 represent the limit of what my keen climbers 

 are capable of achieving. 



We shall see, in a moment, the object of 

 this climbing-propensity, which is a sufficiently 

 remarkable instinct in the Garden Spiders, 

 who have as their domain the low-growing 

 brushwood wherein the nets are spread; it be- 

 comes a still more remarkable instinct in the 

 Lycosa, who, except at the moment when she 

 leaves her mother's back, never quits the 

 ground, and yet, in the early hours of her life, 

 shows herself as ardent a wooer of high places 

 as the young Garden Spiders. 



184 



