RENEWING OLD ACQUAINTANCE. 17 



Mountains, northward to Vermont, and southward as 

 far as Texas and Florida, She has adapted herself to 

 the widely-separated conditions of this immense terri- 

 tory without any perceptible variation in form or habit. 



Let me describe her : her cephalothorax (united head 

 and chest, or head-thorax) is robed in a beautiful 

 silver-drab, so that thus far she has adopted the tradi- 

 tional color of the Society of Friends. But in the rest 

 of her body she is not so orthodox, for the abdomen 

 is beautifully marked with black, yellow and brown. 

 Her eight legs are dark orange, ringed with brown and 

 black. She has no fixed popular name, although I have 

 heard her called the large meadow^ spider. She belongs 

 to the group known as orbweavers {Orhitelarke), because 

 of the wheel-shaped geometric snare which they spin. 

 There is a peculiarity in her snare, as it is generally 

 formed, which at once marks it. In the centre, or hull, 

 is woven a thick white silken oval patch, from the top ot 

 which extends upward a ribbon of like material. From 

 beneath runs downward a zigzag cord, which resembles 

 more closely than anything I know in natural spinning- 

 work, the "winding-stair" up which the unhappy fly 

 was "dragged into the dismal den," according to the 

 plaintive school-book classic of the " Spider and the 

 Fly." Argiope loves such sites as the reedy banks of 

 Townes' Run, and one will often see her web swnuig 

 among the tall grasses and bushes, while the occupant 

 hangs head downward upon her central shield. 



I had unfolded a light camp-stool and was seated con- 

 tentedly sketching this pretty object when alight tread 



