NATURE'S CRAFTSMEN 



and so balanced and stayed that it is like to outlive the 

 winter with its snows and wimls/ 



Had you come a little earlier, you would have seen 

 the spider mother thrusting up against the wee silk 

 canopy a round bunch of yellow eggs. There are a 

 thousand of them, or thereabouts — good promise, one 

 would think, for a full household in due time. But, like 

 the orchard blooms of spring, there will be many a life- 

 bud lost in Argiope's garden ere October comes again. 

 Next, the mother, still working upward, had overlaid 

 the egg-mass with a crinkletl silken yarn of a brownish 

 hue, which, as the eggs shall hatch, shall be cradle and 

 commons for the spiderlings until the' call of spring bids 

 to their exode. Next to this was placed a bright-yellow 

 floss, loosely spun between the eggs and the inner sur- 

 face of the outer case at which the mother was spinning 

 when you came upon her. 



This she will closely wrap and pack, and, as it seems, 

 finish it with a sort of varnish that makes it water-tight. 

 At least, if you will visit it in midwinter you shall find 

 that it crackles beneath your touch like oil-skin. In- 

 deed, the good spider matron has made canny provision 

 for her children's future in this silk-spun, pear-shaped 

 cradle home. How got the cunning and skill into her 

 brain cells? And did the first mother Argiope have the 

 same ? And if not, why not ? And how did her house- 

 ful of baby spiderlings manage in those early days 

 to get on without it? But — "Silence in the ranks!" 

 Hath it not been said that a certain order of intellect 

 can ask more questions in a minute than a sage can 

 answer in a day? 



* This whole process is described and ilhistrated in the author's 

 American Spiders and their Spinning-ivork, vol. ii., pp. 159-164. 



252 



