170 THE WONDERS OF INSTINCT 



The fowler waits, in the mild sunlight of the autumn 

 morning. Suddenly, great excitement in the cages. 

 The Chaffinches chirp their rallying cry : 



"Pinck! Pinck!" 



There is something happening in the sky. The Sambe, 

 quick! They are coming, the simpletons; they swoop 

 down upon the treacherous floor. With a rapid move- 

 ment, the man in ambush pulls his string. The nets 

 close and the whole flock is caught. 



Man has wild beast's blood in his veins. The fowler 

 hastens to the slaughter. With his thumb he stifles the 

 beating of the captives' hearts, staves in their skulls. 

 The little birds, so many piteous heads of game, will go 

 to market, strung in dozens on a wire passed through 

 their nostrils. 



For scoundrelly ingenuity, the Epeira's net can bear 

 comparison with the fowler's; it even surpasses it when, 

 on patient study, the main features of its supreme perfec- 

 tion stand revealed. W'hat refinement of art for a mess 

 of Flies! Nowhere, in the whole animal kingdom, has 

 the need to eat inspired a more cunning industry. If the 

 reader will meditate upon the description that follows, 

 he will certainly share my admiration. 



In bearing and coloring, Epeira fasciata is the hand- 

 somest of the Spiders of the South. On her fat belly, a 

 mighty silk-warehouse nearly as large as a hazel-nut, are 

 alternate yellow, black and silver sashes, to which she 

 owes her epithet of Banded. Around that portly abdo- 

 men the eight long legs, with their dark- and pale-brown 

 rings, radiate like spokes. 



