CHAPTER XVI 



ORANGE ARGIOPE 



IF size and beauty and fair handicraftmansliip might 

 give a title to queenhood of Araneir, the crown, with- 

 out doubt, would go to Orange Argiope. And, pray, 

 who is she? Good sooth, she is a spinster, a spinner, a 

 spinder, a spider! Hold back your prejudice, good 

 reader, and hear her story. Mayhaj), then, your gorge 

 will not rise, as is its wont, at her very name. Familiars 

 of rural scenes often have seen her vast and shapely 

 cobweb hung in divers sites, especially in low-lying 

 places, which she chiefly affects, perhaps because they 

 give the best foraging-grounds for her enormous appe- 

 tite for insects. Professor Hentz, the father of Ameri- 

 can araneology, found her so often in such places that 

 he gave her the specific name riparia, and so for long 

 she was called — -Bank Argiope. In like places one will 

 oftenest find her in the Eastern and Atlantic States, 



True, she does come at times into our gardens and 

 shrubbery-dotted la^vns; mainly in the corners where 

 clumps of bushes grow. There you may see her great 

 snare hung amid the honeysuckles or swung between 

 the retinosporse in the evergreen plantations. You will 

 know it by the broad, white shield that often fills the 

 centre, from which there reaches downward a fair zig- 

 zag of spinning - work that may well have been the 



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