426 



AMERICAN SPIDERS AND THEIR SPINNINGWORK. 



in the natural conditions surrounding most inferior creatures, so that the 

 immense fecundity of insects and araneads, for example, is abundantly 



checked. I have counted over eleven hundred eggs and young 

 ^P 11 spiders in the single cocoon of Argiope cophinaria; yet, though 



a score of cocoons may hang in a field, one will scarcely 

 find as many spiders as cocoons the next summer. In efforts to breed 

 spiders from cocoons, I have at various times seen colonies numbering from 



FIG. 364. Argiope cophinaria hanging dead beside her cocoon. 



one and two to ten hundred dispersed from the maternal egg nest to sur- 

 rounding foliage, of which during the year not a single survivor could be 

 traced. 



Bee keepers are well aware of the great mortality among working bees, 

 caused not only by disease and accidents, but especially by those enemies 

 which prey upon them. Ants are quite as much, perhaps even more 

 exposed to loss from accidents, the exigencies of weather, and the appetites 



