CHAPTER X. 
THE HOME AND LOVES OF THE SPIDER. 
THE spider greatly surpasses all other soli- 
tary-living insects. It not only possesses 
its nest, its ambush, its temporary hunt- 
ing-station; it has (or, at least, certain 
species have) a regular house, a house of a 
very complex description: a vestibule, and 
a sleeping-chamber, and a mode of egress in 
the rear; and, finally, a door which is a 
very triumph of art, for it closes of itself, 
falling back by its own weight. 
The door! 
It is this which is want- 
ing even in the grand cities of the bees and the ants; these industrial 
republics have never hitherto attained to so lofty a climax. 
