The Spiders' Exodus 



eighteen inches tall, as a climbing-pole. The 

 whole band hurriedly clambers up and reaches 

 the top. In a few moments there is not one 

 lacking in the group on high. The future 

 will tell us the reason of this assemblage on 

 the projecting tips of the twigs. 



The little Spiders are now spinning here 

 and there at random : they go up, go down, 

 come up again. Thus is woven a light veil of 

 divergent threads, a many-cornered web with 

 the end of the branch for its summit and the 

 edge of the table for its base, some eighteen 

 inches wide. This veil is the drill-ground, the 

 work-yard where the preparations for de- 

 parture are made. 



Here hasten the humble little creatures, 

 running indefatigably to and fro. When the 

 sun shines upon them; they become gleaming 

 specks, and form upon the milky background 

 of the veil a sort of constellation, a reflex of 

 those remote points in the sky where the tele- 

 scope shows us endless galaxies of stars. The 

 immeasurably small and the immeasurably 

 large are alike in appearance. It is all a mat- 

 ter of distance. 



But the living nebula is not composed of 

 fixed stars; on the contrary, its specks are in 



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