The Road to Dumbiedykes 



with not a thought of coming trouble 

 in their tiny brains. 



Most people despise spiders. I do 

 not know whether they are more bril- 

 liant in achievement than the, ant or 

 not, but their handiwork is surely more 

 spectacular. There is a beautiful big, 

 black velvet fellow, for instance, with 

 yellow plush trimmings, that spreads 

 a net upon the barberry every summer 

 that is certainly a geometric gem. 

 They say he is poisonous. Well, I 

 have no doubt he has been endowed, 

 like the rest of us, by Nature with 

 some means of providing himself with 

 food. The manner of his operation 

 is not his fault, any more than is that 

 of the robin going into the earth with 

 a well-sharpened beak for his legitimate 

 prize of war. 



The month of August finds the 

 insect tide at its very height, and when 

 about the evening of the fifteenth day 

 arrives we listen for the first fiddling 

 of a katydid. You will always hear 

 [ii6] 



