672 



AMF.RTCAX FORF.STin' 



on (lifTerent individuals vary a little, while being;, invaria- 

 bly, after the same 

 general p a 1 1 e rn. 

 You may collect 

 thousands of gar- 

 den spiders ; and, 

 in so far as color- 

 pattern goes, you 

 will not meet with 

 any greater varia- 

 tion than is here 

 shown in Figure 8. 

 Ernest Ingersoll, 

 in his work "The 

 Animal World," 

 says that this spe- 

 cies of spider has 

 a "white cross u;)on 

 its back." In this 

 he is surely incor- 

 rect, and must have 

 had at hand some 

 other species wdien 

 he wrote his ac- 



comt across a bouncing, big male — larger than any of "Abridged Check-List of North American Birds" in 1910. 

 those shown in Figure 8. W'hen on their webs, this si)e- no fewer than forty-four different kinds of these birds 

 cies always "rests with its head toward the ground. It occurred in North America, north of the Mexican boun- 

 will be noted that the yellow or jjale orange markings dary. Some of the species are very large and handsome, 



while some of the little pygmy owls are no bigger than 

 a sparrow — beautifully ]jlumaged and having very inter- 

 esting life histories. Our Saw-whet owls are considera- 

 bly larger than these, but none the less worthy of admi- 

 ration and study. In Figure 11 of the present article 

 we have a reproduction of a life photograph of the Saw- 

 whet of the East. Early in the last century this species 

 . was quite abundant throughout the Middle and New Eng- 

 land States, while at the jjresent waiting the bird is com- 

 paratively rare. This little fellow is quite nocturnal in 

 its habits ; in fact, so poor is its eyesight in the daytime 

 that there are many instances on record where it has been 

 caught by the hand when found i)erching somewhere in 

 the bright sunlight. The darker part of the plumage is 

 of a rather deep ashy brown, and the lighter part a 

 creamv white, tinged with ash, some of the head and 



tail markings be- 

 ing almost pure 

 white. .\s is the 

 case with nearly all 

 owls, the female is 

 fully an inch larger 

 than the male, and 

 measures about 

 eight and a half 

 inches in extreme 

 length. All owls 

 lay pure white 

 eggs, noted for 

 their unusual ap- 

 proach to spheri- 

 city ; sometimes an 

 owl's egg will be 

 met with which is 

 almost a perfect 

 sphere. They are 

 extremely u s e f ul 

 liirds with res])e(t 

 I'l man's interests, 

 hir they destroy on 

 farms and in agri- 

 cultural d i s t r icts 

 generally t h o u- 

 sands ujion thou- 

 sands of field mice 

 and fi e 1 d mice 

 stand among the 

 greatest grain con- 

 sumers that the 

 fanner has to deal 

 \v i I li tiiniughout 

 the vear. .Some ui" mir large specio ol (iwls nia\' from time 

 to time destroy piniUry on the farm: but they are also the 

 eternal enemies of many of the farm vernnn and pests, while 

 the smaller s]iecies of these valuable l)irds stand among the 



IlKKK WE II.-WE A REL.-\TIVE OF THE 

 COMMON G.-\RDE\ SPIDER 



Fig. 9 — Mr. Natlian Batiks examined the speci- 

 mens shown in this cut, and he said of them that 

 "These spiders are the Argiopi: trifiisciata. Forsk . 

 both females. They are commonly called the 

 'Silver ladder spider.' The species is fairly com 



count of "T h e "^otl in the Eastern States from Massachusetts 

 south to Florida, and into the West Indies and 



Gar den Suider " Central America." To this we may add that they 

 ^ ' were collected at Bradley Hills, near Washini?- 



He does not even *oi. D- C , being found on a head" of a common 

 Golden Rod. 



refer to the chief 



distinguishing character of the garden spider's web — 

 the i)eculiar zig-zag, dense sort of pathway it spins 

 above and below its central mat or resting place (Fig. 

 7). The true use of this has not as yet been made out; 

 it appears to be simply added to the web, in many in- 

 stances, for the ])tirpose of adornment. .-V close relative 

 of the garden spider is show-n in Figure 7 ; ])robably both 

 species built a nest quite like the one shown in Figure 10. 



.S]jiders form an enormous group in the animal world. 

 and many thousands of s])ecies have been described : 

 doubtless a legion of them are still to be discovered bv 

 naturalists. How many have become utterly e.xtinct in 

 geologic time we can never know — probably many 

 times the number, with respect to s])ecies, now rei)re- 

 sented in the world's existing arachnine fauna. Men 

 have lived who have devoted their entire lives to the 

 study of spiders, their researches occu])ying many hours 

 every day of the week. In a few instances of this kind, 

 only a few genera have thus been studied and worked 

 up. In these war times such devotion is extremely rare. 



It is a long s])an from sjnders tti owls, and in making 

 it we pass over a great many thousands of .inimal forms 

 — vertebrate as well as invertebrate. One would be sur- 

 prised when told of the number of species and subspecies 

 of owls we have in the avifauna of the L'nited States; 

 ])erhaps not one person in a good many thousand, as ])eo- 

 ple go. would guess anywhere near the correct number. 



GARDEN SPIDERS BUILD A ROI-M) .\M' 

 DENSELY WOVEN NEST 



Fie. 10 — Vou will find these nests in the old 

 fields and elsewhere in the autumn. Generally 

 they are attaehe<l to the stems of the coarse 

 grasses and other vegetation. A small opening 

 IS left at the top, while they are held in place by 

 silken straiuls leading to the supports on all 

 sides. The buttertly on the grourxl is a beautiful 

 specimen of a male Buckeye {Jiinoiiia corma), an 

 abundant species in certain localities through 

 out the Southern .States They are very pugna 

 cious and fight i>tlu-r species of butterllies 



When the .'Xmerican Ornithologists' I'nioii jiulilished its best friends the Inisbandm.-m ha- 



upon 



his estates. Thev 



