CHAPTER X 



THE GARDEN SPIDERS: MY NEIGHBOUR 



A GE does not modify the Epeira's talent 

 -*• *■ in any essential feature. As the young 

 worked, so do the old, the richer by a 

 year's experience. There are no masters nor 

 apprentices in their guild; all know their craft 

 from the moment that the first thread is laid. 

 We have learnt something from the novices: 

 let us now look into the matter of their elders 

 and see what additional task the needs of age 

 impose upon them. 



July comes and gives me exactly what I 

 wish for. While the new inhabitants are 

 twisting their ropes on the rosemaries in the 

 enclosure, one evening, by the last gleams of 

 twilight, I discover a splendid Spider, with a 

 mighty belly, just outside my door. This one 

 is a matron; she dates back to last year; her 

 majestic corpulence, so exceptional at this 

 season, proclaims the fact. I know her 

 for the Angular Epeira (Epeira angulata, 

 Walck.), clad in grey and girdled with two 

 dark stripes that meet in a point at the back. 



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