The Life of the Spider 



guy-ropes, attached to any chance projection, 

 moor it to the brushwood. There is not a 

 twig but supplies a contact-point. Entwined 

 on every side, surrounded and surmounted, the 

 bush disappears from view, veiled in white 

 muslin. 



The web is flat at the edges, as far as the 

 unevenness of the support permits, and gradu- 

 ally hollows into a crater, not unlike the bell 

 of a hunting-horn. The central portion is a 

 cone-shaped gulf, a funnel whose neck, 

 narrowing by degrees, dives perpendicularly 

 into the leafy thicket to a depth of eight or 

 nine inches. 



At the entrance to the tube, in the gloom of 

 that murderous alley, sits the Spider, who 

 looks at us and betrays no great excitement at 

 our presence. She is grey, modestly adorned 

 on the thorax with two black ribbons and on 

 the abdomen with two stripes in which white 

 specks alternate with brown. At the tip of the 

 belly, two small, mobile appendages form a 

 sort of tail, a rather curious feature in a 

 Spider. 



The crater-shaped web is not of the same 

 structure throughout. At the borders, it is a 

 gossamer weft of sparse threads; nearer the 



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