Building the Web 199 



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 perfection stand revealed. 

 What 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. 



First of all, we must witness the making of 

 the net ; we must see it constructed and see it 

 again and again, for the plan of such a complex 

 work can only be grasped in fragments. To-day, 

 observation will give us one detail ; to-morrow, 

 it will give us a second, suggesting fresh 

 points of view ; as our visits multiply, a new 

 fact is each time added to the sum total of the 

 acquired data, confirming those which come 

 before or directing our thoughts along unsus- 

 pected paths. 



The snow-ball rolling over the carpet of white 

 rows enormous, however scanty each fresh 

 lyer be. Even so with truth in observa- 



