190 The Life of the Spider 



she confuses alien produce with the produce 

 of her ovaries and her silk-factory. Those 

 hallowed words, maternal love, were out of 

 place here : it is an impetuous, an almost 

 mechanical impulse, wherein real affection plays 

 no part whatever. The beautiful Spider of the 

 rock-roses is no more generously endowed. 

 When moved from her nest to another of the 

 same kind, she settles upon it and never stirs 

 from it, even though the different arrangement 

 of the leafy fence be such as to warn her that 

 she is not really at home. Provided that she 

 have satin under her feet, she does not notice her 

 mistake ; she watches over another's nest with 

 the same vigilance which she might show in 

 watching over her own. 



The Lycosa surpasses her in maternal blind- 

 ness. She fastens to her spinnerets and dangles, 

 by way of a bag of eggs, a ball of cork polished 

 with my file, a paper pellet, a little ball of 

 thread. In order to discover if the Thomisus 

 is capable of a similar error, I gathered some 

 broken pieces of silk-worm's cocoon into a 

 closed cone, turning the fragments so as to 

 bring the smoother and more delicate inner 



