200 THE WONDERS OF INSTINCT 



no use going to the expense of a signaling-apparatus for 

 a ruined snare wherein nothing can now be caught. 

 Only the old Spiders, meditating or dozing in their green 

 tent, are warned from afar, by telegraph, of what takes 

 place on the web. 



To save herself from keeping a close watch that would 

 degenerate into drudgery and to remain alive to events 

 even when resting, with her back turned on the net, the 

 ambushed Spider always has her foot upon the telegraph- 

 wire. Of my observations on this subject, let me relate 

 the following, which will be sufficient for our purpose. 



An Angular Epeira, with a remarkably fine belly, has 

 spun her web between two laurustine-shrubs, covering a 

 width of nearly a yard. The sun beats upon the snare- 

 which is abandoned long before dawn. The Spider is 

 in her day manor, a resort easily discovered by following 

 the telegraph-wire. It is a vaulted chamber of dead 

 leaves, joined together with a few bits of silk. The 

 refuge is deep: the Spider disappears in it entirely, all 

 but her rounded hind-quarters, which bar the entrance 

 to her donjon. 



With her front half plunged into the back of her 

 hut, the Epeira certainly cannot see her web. Even if 

 she had good sight, instead of being purblind, her posi- 

 tion could not possibly allow her to keep the prey in 

 view. Does she give up hunting during this period of 

 bright sunlight? Not at all. Look again. 



Wonderful ! One of her hind-legs is stretched outside 

 the leafy cabin; and the signaling-thread ends just at 

 the tip of that leg. Whoso has not seen the Epeira in 



