NATURE'S CRAFTSMEN 



the margins of her orl), weaving in her spirals as though 

 spreading a table for the last banquet of fast-ebbing 

 life. 



Still further, as one moves on, he sees fragments of 

 the once beautiful snares stretched out at various points 

 between the stalks of tall grass and low-lying shrubbery. 

 The strands flutter in the breeze. The central patch of 

 white silk flaunts like a tattered banner after a battle. 

 The radii are snapped asunder. The spirals have been 

 disarmed of their viscid beads, or keep only enough to 

 capture helpless insects of the smaller sorts that expire 

 without even the poor satisfaction of helping to re- 

 juvenate exhausted nature by rendering their lives an 

 offering to the vigor of another creature. The race of 

 Argiope is gone for the current year. 



If further you seek these noble araneads that lately 

 brightened and enlivened the landscape, you will find 

 some of them hanging lifeless and limp to strands of 

 their broken webs. The legs are relaxed, out-stretched 

 or crumpled up, and hanging by death-clinched claws 

 to pendent threads. The abdomen is shrunken, droop- 

 ing, and sways dully in the light autumn breeze. " It is 

 the old, old fashion — death!" 



Other dead forms will be found in various nooks, 

 beneath embowering leaves or in other cosey retreats 

 whither they have crept to weave their egg-cocoons. 

 The last force of life had been spent in this act of fidelity 

 to the future of her race; and hard by the shrivelled 

 corpse you may see the pretty casket on which Nature 

 has laid her sign of life. Soon the rains of autumn and 

 the winds shall have eased the body to the earth to 

 mingle with the leaf -mould and the soil. But when 

 spring has revived the world, another generation shall 



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