8 MY STUDIO NEIGHBORS 



where in its dusty spread, tapers off into a dark 

 tunnel, where lurks the eight-eyed schemer, " o'er- 

 looking all his waving: snares around." 



Sooner or later, it would seeril, every too con- 

 stant buzzing visitor encroaches on its domain, 

 and is drawn to its silken vortex, and is eventual- 

 ly shed below as a clean dried specimen ; for this 

 is an agalena spider, which dispenses with the 

 winding-sheet of the field species — epeira and 

 argiope. Last week a big bumble-bee -like fly 

 paid me a visit and suddenly disappeared. To- 

 day I find him dried and ready for the insect-pin 

 and the cabinet on the window-sill beneath the 

 web, which affords at all times its liberal ento- 

 mological assortment — Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, 

 Diptera, and Lepidoptera. Many are the rare 

 specimens which I have picked from these char- 

 nel remnants of my spider net. 



Ah, hark ! The talking " robber-fly " {Asilus\ 

 with his nasal, twangy buzz ! " IVaiow ! Wha-a-ar 

 are ye ?" he seems to say, and with a suggestive 

 onslaught against the window-pane, which beto- 

 kens his satisfied quest, is out again at the win- 

 dow with a bluebottle-fly in the clutch of his pow- 

 erful legs, or perhaps impaled on his horny beak. 



Solitude ! Not here. Amid such continual 

 distraction and entertainment concentration on 



