50 FLASHLIGHTS ON NATURE 



close-knit creche or communal nursery. Gathering 

 together in a compact ball or mass, like bees when 

 they swarm, the wee creatures began by spinning 

 in common a covering of thin silk, in whose midst 

 they lay rolled up in an apparently inextricable 

 tangle of legs and bodies. That is the universal 

 fashion of young spiders of this kind. But if you 

 touch them with a straw, a strange commotion 

 takes place all at once in the crowded home. The 

 mass unrolls itself. The six or eight hundred small 

 beasts within wake all together to a sense of their 

 responsibilities; the ball, which looks at first like a 

 cherry-stone, divides as if by magic into so many 

 eager and frightened animals ; and the spiderlings 

 disperse like the nations at Babel. Each goes his 

 or her own way helter-skelter, in search of a suit- 

 able place to commence operations as a general 

 flycatcher ; and in two minutes the space around 

 is fairly colonised by spiders, who set their snares 

 at once with exemplary industry. I am glad to be 

 able to give them credit for the one good quality 

 they do really possess ; though I am aware that in 

 their case industry is often only another name for 

 consummate greediness. 



From the general gathering of the clan in which 

 our Rosalind thus took part she was rudely roused 

 by the touch of such a straw ; and, emerging in 

 haste into the open world, the great, cruel world, 

 amidst whose temptations henceforth she was to 

 earn her dishonest livelihood, she cast about her 

 for a favouring breeze to waft her first-spun threads 

 to some lucky position. It was a delicate operation. 



