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bare. She next begins to cover these by spinning a thick web round them, and 
when she has completed this task there is a ball of eggs much larger than her body. 
The eggs are beautifully marked. 
Nothing can exceed the affection the female spider has for her cocoon. It is 
the one great and amiable trait in her character. Those spiders who carry their 
eggs about with them will sooner part with life than their bag of eggs. When it 
has been taken from them by force and placed at some distance, they have been 
seen to take them up and fasten them to their bodies with the greatest care. 
Bonnet, the naturalist, says that he one day threw a spider with her eggs into the 
pitfall of an ant-lion. The spider tried to escape, but he threw her again to the 
bottom, and the ant-lion, being more nimble than he was the first time, seized the 
bag of eggs with its jaws, and tried to drag it under the sand. The spider made 
the greatest efforts to keep her eggs, but the gum which fastened the bag to her 
not being strong enough to withstand such violence, gave way, and the ant-lion 
began to carry off his prize. But again the mother seized it with her jaws, but the 
ant-lion being the strongest, dragged it under the sand. The mother, robbed of 
her eggs, might have saved her life, as she could easily have escaped—but she chose 
to be buried alive along with her eggs—as the sand concealed what was going on 
below, the naturalist laid hold of the spider, leaving the bag with the ant-lion. 
But the affectionate mother would not quit the spot where she had lost her treasure, 
and life seemed to have become a burden to her. 
The same naturalist also observes that he tried his utmost to beat off a 
spider from her bag of eggs, after he had detached them for a long time ; at last, 
to his surprise, he found she no longer resisted, and when he put the cocoon near 
to her she retreated from it. On closer examination he found that several of the 
young ones were hatched, and their numbers increased so rapidly, and they all ran 
towards their mother, and climbed upon her body, some on her back, others on 
her head, and many on her legs, so that she was completely covered with them, 
and appeared to bend under their weight, not so much from being overladen as 
from her feeble condition, and she very soon died, while the young spiders remained 
in a group upon their parent to suck the juices of her body. Afterwards Bonnet 
tried to prove whether a spider of the same species could distinguish her own eggs 
from those of astranger. He interchanged the eggs of two individuals, which he 
had placed under inverted wine-glasses, but both showed great uneasiness, and 
would not touch the strange bags. One of the mothers was then placed into the 
glass containing her own eggs and the other spider, but even then she would have 
nothing to do with them, which was believed to be in consequence of the presence 
of the other, as all spiders nourish mutual animosity. However, upon removing 
the stranger, she showed the same indifference to her eggs, and it was concluded 
that after having lost sight of them for a short time she was no longer able to 
recognise them. 
Nearly every one has noticed fine floating webs, which seem sometimes to 
cover the earth, and almost fill the air, on still summer and autumn days. These 
webs are produced by the Gossamer Spider. In favourable autumns they are 
