152 The Life of the Spider 



again, are impelled to seek in a higher position 

 what they have failed to find in a lower. The 

 top of my two bamboos probably fails to repre- 

 sent the limit of what my keen climbers are 

 capable of achieving. 



We shall see, in a moment, the object of 

 this climbing-propensity, which is a sufficiently 

 remarkable instinct in the Garden Spiders, 

 who have as their domain the low-growing 

 brushwood wherein their nets are spread ; it 

 becomes a still more remarkable instinct in the 

 Lycosa, who, except at the moment when she 

 leaves her mother's back, never quits the ground 

 and yet, in the early hours of her life, shows 

 herself as ardent a wooer of high places as the 

 young Garden Spiders. 



Let us consider the Lycosa in particular. In 

 her, at the moment of the exodus, a sudden 

 instinct arises, to disappear, as promptly and 

 for ever, a few hours later. This is the climbing- 

 instinct, which is unknown to the adult and soon 

 forgotten by the emancipated youngling, doomed 

 to wander homeless, for many a long day, upon 

 the ground. Neither of them dreams of climb- 

 ing to the top of a grass-stalk. The full-grown 



