egg hatched, the larva in this tomb with the body 

 of the spider would find such gruesome state con- 

 genial enough — being of the wasps. In this case 

 a spider the less means a wasp the more. 



Late one afterr^oon a spider was construdting 

 her web. She already had her first line stretched 

 between two small shrubs. On this she crossed 

 and recrossed several times, each trip reeling out 

 a new strand from her spinnerets, until she had a 

 stout cable from which the gossamer structure was 

 to depend. From an end of this she dropped to 

 the ground and fastened a thread, then ascended, 

 traversed the cable and dropped lines from the 

 other end to the twigs beneath. All were remark- 

 ably taut and firm. By crossing two she now 

 established the center of the web — not the geo- 

 metric center — and from the overhead cable spun 

 some radii to this point and from this to the lower 

 strand. In an incredibly short time she had lines 

 radiating in all directions from the center like the 

 spokes of a wheel. 



She now fairly ran over these spokes paying out 

 the strand as she laid the spiral web upon the 

 gleaming radii. Starting at the center she traveled 

 from left to right, passing the thread through the 



85 



