 CHAPTER 8 THE LIFE OF THE SPIDER by Jean-Honry Fabre Translated by Alexandre Dematos This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org THE LIFE OF THE SPIDER by Jean-Honry Fabre Translated by Alexandre Dematos CHAPTER 8 THE CRAB SPIDER The spider that showed me the exodus in all its magnificence is known officially as Thomasus Onustus. Though the name suggests nothing to the reader's mind, it has the advantage, at any rate, of hurting neither the throat nor the ear, as is too often the case with scientific nomenclature, which sounds more like sneezing than articulate speech. Since it is the rule to dignify plants and animals with a Latin label, let us at least respect the euphony of the classics and refrain from harsh splutters which spit out a name instead of pronouncing it. What will posterity do in the face of the rising tide of a barbarous vocabulary, which under the pretense of progress stifles real knowledge? It will relegate the whole business to the quagmire of oblivion, but what will never disappear is the popular name, which sounds well, as picturesque, conveys some sort of information, such as the term crab spider, applied by the ancients to the group to which the Thomasus belongs, in a pretty accurate term, for in this case there is an evident analogy between the spider and the crustacean. Like the crab the Thomasus walks sideways. She also has four legs stronger than her hind legs. The only thing wanting to complete the resemblance is the front pair of stone gauntlets raised in the attitude of self-defense. The spider, with a crab-like figure, does not know how to manufacture nets for catching game. Without springs or snares she lies in ambush among the flowers, and awaits the arrival of the quarry, which she kills by administering a scientific stab in the neck. The Thomasus in particular, the subject of this chapter, is passionately addicted to the pursuit of the domestic bee. I have described the contests between the victim and her executioner at greater length elsewhere. The bee appears, seeking no quarrel, intent upon plunder. She tests the flowers with her tongue. She selects a spot that will yield a good return. Soon she is wrapped up in her harvesting. While she is filling her baskets and distending her crop, the Thomasus, that bandit lurking under cover of the flowers, issues from her hiding place. Creeps round behind the bustling insect, steals up close, and with a sudden rush, nabs her in the nap of the neck. In vain the bee protests, and darts her sting at random. The assailant does not let go. Besides, the bite in the neck is paralyzing, because the cervical nerve centers are affected. The poor thing's legs stiffen, and all is over in a second. The murderess now sucks the victim's blood at her ease, and, when she is done, scornfully flicks the drained corpse aside. She hides herself once more, ready to bleed a second gleener, should the occasion offer. This slaughter of the bee engaged in the hallowed delights of labor has always revolted me. Why should there be workers to feed idlers? Why sweated to keep sweaters in luxury? But should so many admirable lives be sacrificed to the greater prosperity of brigandage? These hateful discords amid the general harmony, perplex the thinker. All the more as we shall see the cruel vampire become a model of devotion where her family is concerned. The ogre loved his children. He ate the children of others. Under the tyranny of the stomach we are all of us, beasts and men alike, ogres. The dignity of labor, the joy of life, maternal affection, the terrors of death. All these do not count in others. The main point is that the morsel be tender and savoury. According to the etymology of her name, Tomig's accord, the Thomasus should be like the ancient Lictor, who bound the sufferer to the stake. The comparison is not inappropriate as regards many spiders who tie their prey with a thread to subdue it and consume it at their ease, but it just happens that the Thomasus is at variance with her label. She does not fasten her bee, who, dying suddenly of a bite in the neck, offers no resistance to her consumer. Carried away by his recollections of the regular tactics, our spider's godfather overlooked the exception. He did not know of the perfidious mode of attack which renders the use of a bow string, superfluous. Nor is the second name, Onustus, loaded, burdened, freighted, any too happily chosen. The fact that the bee huntress carries a heavy punch is no reason to refer to this as a distinctive characteristic. Nearly all spiders have a voluminous belly, a silk warehouse wear, in some cases the rigging of the net, in others the swans down of the nest is manufactured. The Thomasus, a first-class nest-builder, does like the rest she hoards in her abdomen, without undue display of obesity, the wear withal to house her family snugly. Can the expression Onustus refer simply to her slow and side-long walk? The explanation appeals to me, without satisfying me fully. Except in the case of a sudden alarm, every spider maintains a sober gait and a wary pace. When all is said, the scientific term is composed of a misconception and a worthless epithet. How difficult it is to name animals rationally. Let us be indignant to the nomenclator. The dictionary is becoming exhausted and the constant flood that requires cataloging mounts incessantly, wearing out our combinations of syllables. As the technical name tells the reader nothing, how shall he be informed? I see but one means, which is to invite him to the May festivals in the wastelands of the South. The murderous of the bees is of a chilly constitution. In our parts she hardly ever moves away from the olive districts. Her favorite shrub is the white-leaved rock rose, Cystus albides, with the large pink crumpled ephemeral blooms that last but a morning and are replaced next day by fresh flowers which have blossomed in the cool dawn. This glorious efflorescence goes on for five or six weeks. Here the bee plunders enthusiastically, fussing and bustling in the spacious whorl of the stamens which beflower them with yellow. Their persecutrix knows of this affluence. She posts herself in her watch-house under the rosy screen of a petal. Cast your eyes over the flower more or less everywhere. If you see a bee lying lifeless, with legs and tongue outstretched, draw nearer. The thomasis will be there, nine times out of ten. The thug has struck her blow. She is draining the blood of the departed. After all, this cutter of bee's throats is a pretty, a very pretty creature, despite her unwieldy paunch, fashioned like a squat pyramid and embossed on the base on either side with a pimple-shaped like a camel's hump. The skin more pleasing to the eye than any satin is milk-white in some and others lemon-yellow. There are fine ladies among them who adorn their legs with a number of pink bracelets and their back with carbon arabesques. A narrow pale green ribbon sometimes edges the right and left of the breast. It is not so rich as the costume of the banded apyrha, but much more elegant because of its soberness, its daintiness and the artful blending of its hues. Novice fingers which shrink from touching any other spider allow themselves to be enticed by these attractions. They do not fear to handle the beautyous thomasis, so gentle in appearance. Well, what can this gem among spiders do? In the first place she makes a nest worthy of its architect. With twigs and horsehair and bits of wool, the goldfinch, the chaffinch, and other masters of the builder's art construct an aerial bower in the fork of the branches. Herself, a lover of high places, the thomasis selects as the site of her nest one of the upper twigs of the rock rose, her regular hunting ground, a twig withered by the heat and possessing a few dead leaves which curl into a little cottage. This is where she settles with her view to her eggs. Ascending and descending with a gentle swing in more or less every direction the living shuttle, swollen with silk, weaves a bag whose outer casing becomes one with the dry leaves around. The work, which is partly visible and partly hidden by its supports, is a pure dead white. Its shape, molded in the angular interval between the bent leaves, is that of a cone and reminds us on a smaller scale of the nest of the silky apyrus. When the eggs are laid the mouth of the receptacle is hermetically closed with a lid of the same white silk. Lastly a few threads stretched like a thin curtain of former canopy above the nest and with the curved tips of the leaves frame a sort of alcove where the mother takes up her abode. It is more than a place of rest after the fatigues of her confinement. It is a guard room, an inspection post where the mother remains sprawling until the youngster's exodus. Greatly emaciated by the laying of her eggs and by her expenditure of silk she lives only for the protection of her nest. Should some vagrant pass nearby she hurries from her watch tower lifts a limb and puts the intruder to flight. If I tease her with a straw she parries with big gestures like those of a prize fighter. She uses her fists against my weapon. When I propose to dislodge her in view of certain experiments I find some difficulty in doing so. She clings to the silken floor. She frustrates my attacks which I am bound to moderate lest I should injure her. She is no sooner attracted outside than she stubbornly returns to her post. She declines to leave her treasure. Even so does the Narber Lekosa struggle when we try to take away her pill. H displays the same pluck and the same devotion and also the same denseness in distinguishing her property from that of others. The Lekosa accepts without hesitation any strange pill which she is given in exchange for her own. She confuses alien produce with the produce of her own ovaries and her silk factory. Those hallowed words, maternal love, we're out of place here. It is an impetuous and almost mechanical impulse wherein real affection plays no part whatever. The beautiful spider of the rock roses is no more generously endowed. When moved from her nest to another of the same kind she settles upon it and never stirs from it. Even though the different arrangement of the leafy fence be such as to warn her that she is not really at home, provided that she have sat under her feet she does not notice her mistake. She watches over another's nest with the same vigilance which she might show in watching over her own. The Lekosa surpasses her in maternal blindness. She fastens to her spinnerets and dangles by way of a bag of eggs, a ball of cork polished with my file, a paper pellet, a little ball of thread. In order to discover if the Thomasus is capable of a similar error I gathered some broken pieces of silkworms cocooned into a closed cone turning the fragments so as to bring the smoother and more delicate inner surface outside. My attempt was unsuccessful. When removed from her home and placed on the artificial wallet the mother Thomasus obstinately refused to settle there. Can she be more clear-sided than the Lekosa? Perhaps so. Let us not be too extravagant with our praise, however. The imitation of the bag was a very clumsy one. The work of laying is finished by the end of May, after which lying flat on the ceiling of her nest the mother never leaves her guard room either by night or day. Seeing her look so thin and wrinkled I imagine that I can please her by bringing her a provision of bees as I was want to do. I have misjudged her needs. The bee hitherto her favorite dish tempts her no longer, invain'd as the prey buzz close by, an easy capture within the cage. The watcher does not shift from her post. Takes no notice of the windfall. She lives exclusively upon maternal devotion, a commendable but unsubstantial fare. And so I see her pining away from day to day, becoming more and more wrinkled. What is the withered thing waiting for before expiring? She is waiting for her children to emerge. The dying creature is still of use to them. When the bandit appear as little ones issue from their balloon they have long been orphans. There is none to come to their assistance. And they have not the strength to free themselves unaided. The balloon has to split automatically and to scatter the youngsters in their flossy mattress all mixed up together. The thomasis' wallet sheathed in leaves over the greater part of its surface never bursts. Nor does the lid rise so carefully as it sealed down. Nevertheless, after the delivery of the brood we see at the edge of the lid a small escaping hole, an exit window. Who could drive this window, which was not there at first? The fabric is too thick and tough to have yielded to the twitches of the feeble little prisoners. It is the mother, therefore, who, feeling her offspring shuffle impatiently under the silken ceiling, herself made a hole in the bag. She persists in living for five or six weeks despite her shattered health, so as to give a last helping hand and open the door for her family. After performing this duty, she gently lets herself die, hugging her nest and turning into a shriveled relic. When July comes, the little ones emerge. In view of their acrobatic habits, I have placed a bundle of slender twigs at the top of the cage in which they were born. All of them passed through the wire gauze and form a group on the summit of the brushwood, where they swiftly weave a spacious lounge of crisscross threads. Here they remain pretty quietly for a day or two. Then footbridges begin to be flung from one object to the next. This is the opportune moment. I put the bunch laden with beasties on a small table in the shade before the open window. Soon the exodus commences, but slowly and unsteadily. There are hesitations, retrogressions, perpendicular falls at the end of a thread, a sense that bring the hanging spider up again. In short, much ado for a poor result. As matters continue to drag, it occurs to me at eleven o'clock to take the bundle of brushwood swarming with the little spiders, all eager to be off and place it on the windowsill in the glare of the sun. After a few minutes of heat and light, the scene assumes a very different aspect. The emigrants run to the top of the twigs, bustle about actively. It becomes a bewildering rope yard where thousands of legs are drawing the hemp from the spinnerets. I do not see the ropes manufactured and sent floating at the mercy of the air, but I guess their presence. Three or four spiders start at a time, each going her own way in directions independent of her neighbors. All are moving upwards. All are climbing some support as can be perceived by the nimble motion of their legs. Moreover, the road is visible behind the climber. It is of double thickness thanks to an added thread. Then at a certain height, individual movement ceases. The tiny animal soars in space and shines, lit up by the sun. Softly it sways, then suddenly takes flight. What has happened? There is a slight breeze outside. The floating cable has snapped. Then the creature has gone off, born on its parachute. I see it drifting away, showing like a spot of light against the dark foliage of the near cypresses, some 40 feet distance. It rises higher. It crosses over the cypress screen. It disappears. Others follow. Some higher, some lower, hither and thither. But the throng has finished its preparation. The hour has come to disperse in swarms. We now see from the crest of the brushwood a continuous spray of starters who shoot up like microscopic projectiles and mount in a spreading cluster. In the end, it is like the bouquet at the finish of a pyrotechnic display. The sheaf of rockets fired simultaneously. The comparison is correct, down to the dazzling light itself. Flaming in the sun like so many gleaming points, the little spiders are the sparks of that living firework. What a glorious send-off. What an entrance into the world. Clutching its aeronautic thread, the minute creature mounts in its apotheosis. Sooner or later, nearer or farther, the fall comes. To live, we have to descend, often very low, alas. The crested lark crumbles the mule droppings in the road, and thus picks up his food. The otten grain which he would never find by soaring in the sky, his throat swollen with song. We have to descend. The stomach's inexorable claims demand it. The spiderling, therefore, touches land. Gravity, tempered by the parachute, is kind to her. The rest of her story escapes me. What infinitely tiny midges does she capture before possessing the strength to stab her B? What are the methods? What are the wiles of Adam contending with Adam? I know not. We shall find her again in spring, grown quite large and crouching among the flowers, whence the B takes toll. End of Chapter 8 The Crabb-Spider Recording by Doug Allison The Fowling Snair is one of the man's ingenious villainies. With lines, pegs and poles, two large earth-coloured nets are stretched upon the ground, one to the right, the other to the left of a bare surface. A long call pulled at the right moment by the Fowler, who hides in a brushwood hut, works them and brings them together suddenly, like a pair of shutters. Divided between the two nets are the cages of the decoy birds. Linnets and chefinches, green finches and yellow hammers, buntings and otolens, sharp-eared creatures which on perceiving the distant passage of a flock of their own kind, forthwith utter a short calling note. One of them, the Sambi, an irresistible tempter, hops about and flaps his wings in apparent freedom. A bit of twine fasts him to his convict's stake. When worn with fatigue and driven desperate by his vain attempts to get away, the sufferer lies down flat and refuses to do his duty. The Fowler is able to stimulate him without stirring from his hut. A long string sets in motion, a little lever working on a pivot, raised from the ground by the diabolical contrivance. The bird flies, falls down and flies up again at each jerk of the cord. The Fowler awaits in mild sunlight of the autumn morning, suddenly great excitement in the cages. The chefinches chirp their rallying cry. Bink, bink! There is something happening in the sky, the Sambi, quick. They are coming, the simpletons. They swoop down upon the treacherous floor, with a rapid movement the man in ambush pulls his string. The net's closed and the whole flock is caught. Man has wild beast's blood in his veins. The Fowler hastens to the slaughter. With his thumb he stifles the beating of the captive's heart, staves in their skulls. The little bird, so many piteous heads of game, will go to market, strung in dozens on a wire pass through their nostrils. For scoundrel-y ingenuity the appearance net can be a comparison with the Fowlers. It even surpasses that when on patient study the main features of a supreme perfection stand revealed. What refinement of art for a mess of flies? Nowhere in the whole animal kingdom has the need to eat in spite a more cunning industry. If the reader will meditate upon the description that follows, he will certainly share my admiration. First of all, we must witness the making of the net. We must see it constructed and see it again and again, for the plan of such a complex work can only be grasped in fragments. Today observation will give us one detail. Tomorrow it will give us a second, suggesting fresh points of view as our visits multiply. A new fact is each time added to the sum total of the acquired data, confirming those which come before, or directing our thoughts along unsuspected paths. The snowball rolling over the carpet of white grows enormous, however scanty each fresh layer be, even so with truth in observational science. It is built up of trifles patiently gathered together, and while the collecting of these trifles means that the student of spider industry must not be charry off his time, at least it involves no distant and speculative research. The smallest garden contains IPERE, all accomplished weavers. In my enclosure, which I have stopped carefully with the most famous breeds, I have six different species under observation, all of a useful size, all first-class spinners. Their names are the banded IPERA, IPERA faciata, walk, the silky IPERA, e-sericea, walk, the angular IPERA, e-angulata, walk, the pale-tinted IPERA, e-palita, olive, the diadem IPERA, or cross-spider, e-diadema, cloak, and the crater IPERA, e-critera, walk. I am able, at the proper hours, all through the fine season to question them, to watch them at work. Now this one, and none that, according to the chances of the day. What I did not see very plainly yesterday, I can see the next day, under better conditions, and on any of the following days, until the phenomenon under observation is revealed in all clearness. Let us go every evening, step by step, from one border of tall rosemaries to the next. Should things move too slowly, we will sit down at the foot of the shrubs, opposite the rope yard where the light falls favorably, and watch with unwaring attention. Each trip will be good for a fact that fills some gap in the ideas already gathered. To appoint oneself in this way, an inspector of spider's webs for many years in succession, and for long seasons, means joining a not overcrowded profession, I admit. Heaven knows it does not enable one to put money by. No matter, the meditative mind returns from that school fully satisfied. To describe the separate progress of the work in the case of each of the six IPERA mentioned would be a useless repetition. All six employ the same methods, and weave similar webs, save for certain details that shall be set forth later. I will therefore sum up in aggregate the particulars supplied by one or other of them. My subjects in the first instance are young, and both but a slight corporation, very far removed from what it will be in the late autumn. The belly, the wallet containing the rote works, hardly exceeds a peppercorn in bulk. The slenderness on the part of the spinstress must not prejudice against their work. There is no parity between their skill and their years. The adult spiders, with their disgraceful paunchers, can do no better. Moreover, the beginners have one very precious advantage for the observer. They work by day, work even in the sun, whereas the old ones weave only at night, at unceasenable hours. The first show us the secrets of their looms without much difficulty, the others conceal them from us. Work starts in July, a couple of hours before sunset. The spinstress of my enclosure then leave their daytime hiding places, select their posts and begin to spin, one here, another there. There are many of them. We can choose where we please. Let us stop in front of this one, whom we surprise in the act of laying the foundations of the structure. Without any appreciable order, she runs about the rosemary hedge. From the tip of one branch to another, within the limits of some 18 inches. Gradually she puts the thread in position, drawing it from her wire mill, with the combs attached to her hind legs. This preparatory work presents no appearance of a concerned plan. The spider comes and goes impetuously, as though at random. She goes up, comes down, goes up again, drives down again, and each time strengthens the points of contact with intricate moorings distributed here and there. The result is a scanty and disordered scaffolding. Is disordered the word? Perhaps not. The appearer's eye, more experienced in matters of this sort than mine, has recognised the general lie of the land, and the rope fabric has been erected accordingly. It is very inaccurate in my opinion, but very suitable for the spider's designs. What is it that she really wants? A solid frame to contain the network of the web? The shapeless structure which she has just built fulfils the desired conditions. It marks out a flat, free, perpendicular area. That is all that is necessary. The whole work, for that matter, is now soon completed. It is done all over again, each evening, from top to bottom, for the incidents of the chase destroyer in a night. The net is as yet too delicate to resist the desperate struggles of the captured prey. On the other hand, the adult's net, which is formed of stouter threads, is adapted to last some time, and the appearer gives it a more carefully constructed framework, as we shall see elsewhere. A special thread, the foundation of the real net, is stretched across the area so capriciously circumscribed. It is distinguished from the others by its isolation, its position at a distance from any twig that might interfere with its swaying length. It never fails to have, in the middle, a thick white point, formed of a little silk cushion. This is the beacon that marks the centre of the future edifice, the post that will guide the appearer and bring order into the wilderness of twists and turns. The time has come to weave the hunting snare. The spider starts from the centre, which bears the white signpost, and running along the transversal thread hurriedly reaches the circumference, that is to say, the irregular frame enclosing the free space. Still, with the same sudden movement, she rushes from the circumference to the centre. She starts again backwards and forwards, makes for the right, the left, the top, the bottom. She hoists herself up, dives down, climbs up again, runs down, and always returns to the central landmark by roads that slant in the most unexpected manner. Each time a radius or spoke is laid, here, there or elsewhere, in what looks like mad disorder. The operation is so erratically conducted that it takes the most unremitting attention to follow it all. The spider reaches the margin off the area by one of the spokes already placed. She goes along this margin for some distance from the point at which she landed, fixes her thread to the frame, and returns to the centre by the same road which she has just taken. The thread obtained on the way in a broken line, partly on the radius and partly on the frame, is too long for the exact distance between the circumference and the central point. On returning to this point, the spider adjusts her thread, stretches it to the correct length, fixes it, and collects what remains on the central signpost. In the case of each radius laid, the surplus is treated in the same fashion, so that the signpost continues to increase in size. It was first a speck, it is now a little pellet, or even a small cushion of a certain breadth. Which you'll see presently what becomes of this cushion were on the spider that niggardly housewife lays her saved-up bits of thread. For the moment, we will note that their peerer works it up with her legs after placing each spoke, teasels it with her claws, and mats it into felt with note-worthy diligence. In so doing, she gives the spokes a solid common support, something like the hub of our carriage wheels. The eventual regularity of the work suggests that the rat-eye are spun in the same order in which they figure in the web, each following immediately upon its next neighbour. Matters pass in another manner, which at first looks like disorder but which is really a judicious contrivance. After setting a few spokes in one direction, the peerer runs across to the other side to draw some in the opposite direction. These sudden changes, of course, are highly logical. They show us how proficient the spider is in the mechanics of rope construction. Were they to succeed one another regularly, the spokes of one group, having nothing as yet to counteract them, would distort their work by their straining, would even destroy it for lack of stabler support. Before continuing, it is necessary to lay a converse group which will maintain the whole by its resistance. Any combination of forces acting in one direction must be forthwith neutralised by another in the opposite direction. This is what our statics teach us and what the spider puts into practice. She is the past mistress of the secrets of rope building without serving an apprenticeship. One would think that this interrupted and apparently disordered labour must result in a confused piece of work. Wrong. The rays are equidistant and form a beautifully regular orb. Their number is a characteristic mark of the different species. The angular appearer places 21 in her web, the banded appearer 32, the silky appearer 42. These numbers are not absolutely fixed, but the variation is very slight. Now which of us would undertake offhand without much preliminary experiment and without measuring instruments to divide a circle into a given quantity of sectors of equal width? The appearer, though weighted with a wallet and tottering on thread shaken by the wind, affect the delicate division without stopping to think. They achieve it by a method which seems mad according to our notions of geometry. Out of disorder they evolve order. We must not, however, give them more than their due. The angles are only approximately equal. They satisfy the demands of the eye but cannot stand the test of strict measurement. Mathematical precision would be superfluous here. No matter, we are amazed at the result obtained. How does the appearer come to succeed with her difficult problem so strangely managed? I am still asking myself the question. The laying of the rat eye is finished. The spider takes her place in the centre, on the little cushion formed in the inaugural signpost, and the bits of thread left over. Stationed on this support she slowly turns round and round. She is engaged on a delicate piece of work. With an extremely thin thread she describes from spoke to spoke starting from the centre, a spiral line with very close coils. The central space thus worked attains in the adult's web, the dimensions of the palm of one's hand. In the younger spider's web it is much smaller, but it is never absent. For reasons which I will explain in the course of this study. I shall call her in future the resting floor. The thread now becomes thicker. The first could hardly be seen. The second is plainly visible. The spider shifts her position with great slanting strides, turns a few times, moving further and further from the centre, fixes her line each time to the spoke which she crosses, and at last comes to a stop at the lower edge of the frame. She has described a spiral with coils of rapidly increasing width. The average distance between the coils, even in the structures of the young appearer, is one centimetre. Let us not be misled by the word spiral, which conveys the notion of a curved line. All curves are banished from the spider's work. Nothing is used but the straight line and its combinations. All that is aimed at is a polygonal line drawn in a curve as geometry understands it. To this polygonal line a work destined to disappear as the real coils are woven. I will give the name of the auxiliary spiral. Its object is to supply crossbars, supporting rungs, especially in the outer zone, where the radii are too distant from one another to afford a suitable groundwork. Its object is also to guide the appearer in the extremely delicate business which she is now about to undertake. But before that one last task becomes essential. The area occupied by the spokes is very irregular, being marked out by the supports of the branch which are infinitely variable. There are angular niches which, if skirted too closely, would disturb the symmetry of the web about to be constructed. The appearer needs an exact space wherein gradually to lay her spiral thread. Moreover she must not leave any gaps through which her prey might find an outlet. An expert in these matters, the spider soon knows the corners that have to be filled up, with an alternating movement first in this direction, then in that she lays, upon the support of the radii, a thread that forms two acute angles at the lateral boundaries of the faulty part, and describes the zigzag line not wholly unlike the ornament known as the fret. The sharp corners have now been filled with frets on every side. The timers come to work at the essential part, the snaring web for which all the rest is but a support. Clinging on the one hand to the radii, on the other to the cords of the auxiliary spiral, the appearer covers the same ground as when laying the spiral, but in opposite direction. Formerly she moved away from the centre, now she moves towards it, and with closer and more numerous circles. She starts from the base of the auxiliary spiral near the frame. What follows is difficult to observe. For the movements are very quick and spasmodic, consisting of a series of sudden little rushes, sways and bends that bewilder the eye. It needs continuous attention and repeated examination to distinguish the progress of the work however slightly. The two hind legs the weaving implements keep going constantly, let us name them according to their position on the work floor. I call the leg that faces the centre of the coil, when the animal moves, the inner leg, the one outside the coil, the outer leg. The latter draws a thread from the spinneret and passes it to the inner leg, which with graceful movement lays it on the radius crossed. At the same time the first leg measures the distance. It groups the last coil placed in position and brings within a suitable range that point of the radius where too the thread is to be fixed. As soon as the radius is touched the thread sticks to it by its own glue. There are no slow operations, no knots, the fixing is done of itself. Meanwhile turning by narrow degrees the spin stress approaches the auxiliary cords, they have just served as her support. When in the end these cords become too close they will have to go, they would impair the symmetry of the work. The spider therefore clutches and holds on to the rungs of a higher row. She picks up one by one as she goes along, those which are of no more use to her and gathers them into a fine spun ball at the contact point of the next spoke. Hence arises a series of silky atoms marking the course of the disappearing spiral. The light has to fall favourably for us to perceive these specks, the only remains of the ruined auxiliary thread. One would take them for grains of dust if the faultless regularity of their distribution did not remind us of the vanished spiral. They continue still visible until the final collapse of the net. And the spider without a stop of any kind turns and turns and turns, drawing nearer to the centre and repeating the operation of fixing her thread at each spoke which she crosses. A good half hour, an hour even among the full-grown spiders is spent on spiral circles, to the number of about fifty for the web of the silky appara, and thirty for those of the banded and the angular appara. At last some distance from the centre, on the borders of what I have called the resting floor, the spider abruptly terminates her spiral when the space would still allow off a certain number of turns. We shall see the reason of this sudden stop presently. Next the appara no matter which, young or old, hurriedly flings herself upon the little central cushion, pulls it out and rolls it into a ball which I expected to see thrown away. But no, her thrifty nature does not permit this waste. She eats the cushion. At first an inaugural landmark, then a heap of bits of thread, she once more melts in the digestive crucible what is no doubt intended to be restored to the silken treasury. It is a tough mouthful, difficult for the stomach to elaborate. Still it is precious and must not be lost. The work finishes with the swallowing, then and there the spider installs herself, head downwards at her hunting post in the centre of the web. The operation which we have just seen gives rise to a reflection. Men are born right-handed, thanks to a lack of symmetry that has never been explained, our right side is stronger and readyer in its movements than our left. The inequality is especially noticeable in the two hands. Our language expresses this supremacy of the favoured side in the terms of dexterity, adroitness and address, all of which allude to the right hand. Is the animal on its side right-handed, left-handed or unbiased? We have had opportunities of showing that the cricket, the grasshopper and many others draw their bow which is on the right-wing case over the sounding apparatus which is on the left-wing case. They are right-handed. When you and I take an unpremeditated turn, we spin around on our right heel. The left side, the weaker, moves on the pivot of the right, the stronger. In the same way, nearly all the mollusks that have spiral shells roll the coils from left to right. Among the numerous species in both land and water fauna, only a very few are exceptional and turn from right to left. It would be interesting to try and work out to what extent that part of the zoological kingdom which boasts a two-sided structure is divided into right-handed and left-handed animals. Can dysimetry, the source of contrast, be a general rule? Or are there neutrals endowed with equal powers of skill and energy on both sides? Yes, there are, and the spider is one of them. She enjoys the very enviable privilege of possessing a left side which is no less capable than the right. She is ambidextrous, as witness the following observations. When laying her sneering thread, every appearer turns in either direction indifferently, as a close watch will prove. Reasons whose secret escapes us determine the direction adopted. Once this or the other course is taken, the spinsteress does not change it, even after incidents that sometimes occur to disturb the progress of the work. It may happen that a knack gets caught in the part already woven. The spider thereupon abruptly interrupts her labours, hastens up to the prey, binds it, and then returns to where she stopped, and continues the spiral in the same order as before. At the commencement of the work, duration in one direction being employed as well as duration in the other. We see that when making her repeated webs, the same appearer turns now her right side, now her left to the centre of the coil. Well, as we have said, it is always with the inner hind leg, the leg nearer the centre, that is to say, in some cases the right, and in some cases the left leg, that she places the thread in position, an exceedingly delicate operation calling for the display of exquisite skill, because of the quickness of the action and the need for preserving strictly equal distances. Anyone seeing this leg working with such extreme precision, the right leg to-day, the left to-morrow, becomes convinced that the appearer is highly ambidextrous. Chapter 10 of The Life of the Spider This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Vali The Life of the Spider by J. Henry Favre Translated by Alexander Demeters Chapter 10 The Garden Spiders My Neighbor Age does not modify the appearer's talent in any essential feature, as the young were so due the old, the richer by a year's experience. There are no masters nor apprentices in their guild. All know their craft from the movement that the first thread is laid. We have learnt something from the nurses. Let us now look into the matter of their elders and see what additional task the needs of age impose upon them. July comes and gives me exactly what I wish for. While the new inhabitants are twisting their robes on the rosemaries in the enclosure, one evening, by the last gleams of twilight, I discover a splendid spider with a mighty belly just outside my door. This one is a matron. She dates back to last year. Her majestic corpulence, so exceptional at this season, proclaims the fact. I know her for the angular apiera, apiera angulata, walk, clad in gray and girdled with two dark stripes that meet in a point at the back. The base of her abdomen swells into a short nipple on either side. This neighbor will certainly serve my turn, provided that she do not work too late at night. Thanks both well. I catch the Buxom one in the act of laying her first threads. At this rate, my success need not be won at the expense of sleep, and, in fact, I am able throughout the month of July and the greater part of August from eight to ten o'clock in the evening to watch the construction of the web, which is more or less ruined nightly by the incidents of the chairs and bells up again next day when too seriously dilapidated. During the two stifling months when the light fails, and a spell of coolness follows upon the furnace heat of the day, it is easy for me, lantern in hand, to watch my neighbors various operations. She has taken up her abode at a convenient height for observation between a row of cypress trees and a clump of laurels near the entrance to an alley haunted by moths. The spot appears well chosen, for the apiera does not change it throughout the season, though she renews her net almost every night. Functually, as darkness falls, our whole family goes and calls upon her. Big and little, we stand amazed at her wealth of belly and her exuberance of mace salts in the maze of quivering ropes. We admire the faultless geometry of the net as it gradually takes shape. All a gleam in the lantern light, the work becomes a fairy orb, which seems woven of moonbeams. Should I linger in my anxiety to clear up certain details, the household which by this time is in bed awaits for my return before going to sleep. What has she been doing this evening, I am asked. Has she finished her web? Has she caught a moth? I describe what has happened. Tomorrow there will be in a less hurry to go to bed. They will want to see everything to the very end. What delightful simple evenings we have spent looking into the spider's workshop. The journal of the angular apiera written up day by day teaches us first of all how she obtains the ropes that form the framework of the building. All day invisible, crouching amid the cypress leaves, the spider at about eight o'clock in the evening solemnly emerges from her retreat and makes for the top of a branch. In this exalted position she sits for some time laying her plans with due regard to the locality. She consults the weather, ascertains if the night will be fine. Then suddenly with her eight legs wide spread she lets herself drop straight down hanging to the line that issues from her spinnerets. Just as the rope maker obtains the even output of his hem by walking backwards so does the apiera obtain the discharge of hers by falling. It is extracted by the weight of her body. The descent, however, has not the brute speed which the force of gravity would give it if uncontrolled. It is governed by the action of the spinnerets which contract or expand their force or close them entirely at the fallers' pleasure. And so with gentle moderation she pays out this living plumb line of which my lantern clearly shows me the plumb but not always the line. The great squab seems at such times to be sprawling in space without the least support. She comes to an abrupt stop two inches from the ground. The silk reel seizes working. The spider turns round, clutches the line which she has just obtained and climbs up by this road still spinning. But this time as she is no longer assisted by the force of gravity the thread is extracted in another manner. The two hind legs with a quick alternate action draw it from the wallet and let it go. On returning to her starting point at a height of six feet or more the spider is now in possession of a double line bent into a loop and floating loosely in a current of air. She fixes her end where it suits her and waits until the other end wafted by the wind has fastened its loop to the adjacent twigs. The desired result may be very slow in coming. It does not tire the unfailing patience of the apiera but it soon wears out mine. And it has happened to me sometimes to collaborate with the spider. I pick up the floating loop with a straw and lay it on a branch at a convenient height. The footbridge erected with my assistance is considered satisfactory just as though the wind had placed it. I count this collaboration among the good actions standing to my credit. Feeling her thread fixed the apiera runs along it repeatedly from end to end adding a fiber to it on each journey. Whether I help or not this forms the suspension cable the main piece of the framework. I call it a cable in spite of its extreme tenderness because of its structure. It looks as though it were single but at two ends it is seen to divide and spread taft wise into numerous constituent parts which are the product of as many crossings. These diverging fibers with their several contact points increase the steadiness of the two extremities. The suspension cable is incomparably stronger than the rest of the work and lasts for an indefinite time. The web is generally shattered after a night's hunting and is nearly always rewoven on the following evening. After the removal of the wreckage it is made all over again on the same side cleared of everything except the cable from which the new network is to hand. The laying of this cable is a somewhat difficult matter because the success of the enterprise does not depend upon the animals industry alone. It has to wait until a breeze carries the line to the pier head in the bushes. Sometimes a calm prevails, sometimes the thread catches at an unsuitable point. This involves great expenditure of time with no certainty of success. And so when once the suspension cable is in being well and solidly placed the apiera does not change it except on critical occasions. Every evening she passes and repasses over it strengthening it with fresh threads. When the apiera cannot manage a fall of sufficient depth to give her the double line with its loop to be fixed at a distance she implies another method. She lets herself down and then climbs up again as we have already seen but this time the thread ends suddenly in a firmy hair pencil a tuft whose parts remain disjointed just as they come from the spinneret's rose. Then this sort of bushy fox's brush is cut short as though with a pair of scissors and the whole thread when unfolds doubles its length which is now enough for the purpose. It is fastened by the end joined to the spider the other floats in the air with its spreading tuft which easily tangles in the bushes. Even so must abandoned apiera go to work when she throws her daring suspension bridge across a stream. Once the cable is laid in this way or in that the spider is in possession of a base that allows her to approach or withdraw from leafy piles at will. From the height of the cable the upper boundary of the projected works she lets herself slip to a slight depth varying the points of her fall. She climbs up again by the line produced by her descent. The result of the operation is a double thread which is unwound while the spider walks along her big footbridge to the contact branch where she fixes the free end of her thread more or less low down. In this way she obtains to right and left a few slanting crossbars connecting the cable with the branches. These crossbars in their turn support others in ever changing directions. When there are enough of them the apiera needs no longer resort to falls in order to extract her threads. She goes from one cord to the next always wire drawing with her hind legs and placing her produce in position as she goes. This results in a combination of straight lines owning no order save that they are kept in one nearly perpendicular plane. They mark a very irregular polygonal area wherein the web itself a work of magnificent regularity shall presently be woven. It is unnecessary to go over the construction of the masterpiece again. The younger spiders have taught us enough in this respect. In both the cases we see the same equidistant red eye laid with a central landmark for a guide. The same auxiliary spiral the scaffolding of temporary ranks soon doomed to disappear the same snaring spiral with its maze of closely woven coils. Let us pass on other details called for our attention. The laying of the snaring spiral is an exceedingly delicate operation because of the regularity of the work. I was bent upon knowing whether if subjected to the din of unaccustomed sounds the spider would hesitate and blunder. Does she work impertibly or does she need undisturbed quiet? As it is I know that my presence and that my life hardly trouble her at all. The sudden flashes emitted by my lantern have no power to distract her from her task. She continues to turn in the light even as she turned in the dark. Neither faster nor slower. This is a good omen for the experiment which I have in view. The first Sunday in August is the Feast of the Patron Saint of the Village, commemorating the finding of Saint Stephen. This is Tuesday, the third day of rejoicings. There will be fireworks tonight at 9 o'clock to conclude the merry makings. There will take place on the high road outside my door at a few steps from the spot where my spider is working. The spin stress is busy upon her great spiral at the very moment when the village big wigs arrive with trumpet and drum and small boys carrying torches. More interested in animal psychology than in pyrotechnical displays, I watch the Apieras doings lantern in hand. The hullabaloo of the crowd, the reports of the motors, the crackle of Roman candles bursting in the sky, the hiss of the rockets, the rain of the sparks, the sudden flashes of white, red or blue light. None of this disturbs the worker who methodically turns and turns again just as she does in the peace of ordinary evenings. Once again the gun which I fired under the plain trees failed to trouble the concert of the cicati. Today the dazzling light of the fire wheels and the splutter of the crackers do not avail to distract the spider from her weaving. And after all what difference would it make to my neighbour if the world fell in? The village could be blown up with dynamite without her losing her head for such a trifle. She would calmly go on with her web. Let us return to the spider manufacturing her net under the usual tranquil conditions. The great spiral has been finished abruptly on the confines of the resting floor. The central cushion, a mat of ends of saved thread, is next pulled up and eaten. But before indulging in this mouthful which closes the proceedings to spiders, the only two of the order, the bandit and the silky apiera, have still to sign their work. A broad white ribbon is laid in a thick zigzag from the centre to the lower edge of the orb. Sometimes, but not always, a second band of the same shape and of lesser length occupies the upper portion opposite the first. I like to look upon these odd flourishes as consolidating air. To begin with, the young apiera never use them. For the moment, heedless of the future and lavish of their silk, they remake their web nightly, even though it be none too much dilapidated and might well serve again. A brand new snare at sunset is the rule with them. And there is little need for increased solidity when the work has to be done again on the moral. On the other hand, in the late autumn, the full-grown spiders, feeling laying time at hand, aren't driven to practice economy, in view of the great expenditure of silk required for the egg bag. Owing to its large size, the net now becomes a costly work which it were well to use as long as possible for finding of once-reserves exhausted when the time comes for the expensive construction of the nest. For this reason, or for others which escaped me, the bandit and the silky apiera think it wise to produce durable work and to strengthen their trials with a cross ribbon. The other apiera, who are put to less expense in the fabrication of their maternal wallet, a mere pill are unequainted with the zigzag binder and, like the younger spiders, reconstruct their web almost nightly. My fat neighbor, the angular apiera, consulted by the light of a lantern, shall tell us how the renewal of the net proceeds. As the twilight fades, she comes turn cautiously from her day dwelling. She leaves the foliage of the cypresses for the suspension cable of her snare. Here, she stands for some time, then descending to her web, she collects the wreckage in great anfils. Everything, spirals, spokes and frame is raked up with her legs. One thing alone is spared, and that is the suspension cable, the sturdy piece of work that has served as a foundation for the previous buildings and will serve for the new after receiving a few strengthening repairs. The collected ruins form a pill which the spider consumes with the same greed that she would show in swallowing her prey. Nothing remains. This is the second instance of the spider's super room economy of their self. We have seen them after the manufacture of the net eating the central guide post a modest mouthful. We now see them gobbling up the whole web or meal, refined and turned into fluid by the stomach, the materials of the old net will serve for other purposes. As soon as the site is thoroughly cleared, the work of the frame and the net begins on the support of the suspension cable which was respected. Would it not be simpler to restore the old web which might serve many times yet if a few rins were just repaired? One would say so, but does the spider know how to patch her work as a thrifty housewife dance her linen? That is the question. To mend severed meshes to replace broken threads to adjust the new to the old, in short to restore the original order by assembling the wreckage would be a far-reaching feat of Paris, a very fine proof of gleams of intelligence capable of performing rational calculations. Our menders excel in this class of work they have as their guide their sins which measures the holes, cuts the new piece to size and fits it into its proper place. Does the spider possess the counterpart of this habit of clear thinking? People declare as much without apparently looking into the matter very closely. They seem able to dispense with the constantious observer's scruples when inflating their bladder of theory. They go straight enough and that is enough. As far as selves, less greatly daring, we will see by experiment if the spider really knows how to repair her work. The angular appearer that near neighbor who has already supplied me with so many documents has just finished her web at 9 o'clock in the evening. It is a splendid night, calm and warm, favorable to the rounds of the moths. All promises good hunting. At the moment when after completing the great spiral the appearer is about to eat the central cushion and settle down upon the resting floor. I cut the web into two, diagonally with a pair of sharp scissors. The sagging of the spokes deprived of their counter-agents reduces an empty space, wide enough for three fingers to pass through. The spider retreats to her cable and looks on without being greatly frightened. When I have done, she quietly returns. She takes her stand on one of the halves at the spot which was the center of the original orb. But as her legs find no footing on one side, she soon realizes that the snare is defective. Thereupon two threads are stretched across the bridge, two threads no more. The legs that lack a foothold spread across them and henceforth the appearer moves no more, devoting her attention to the incidence of the chase. When I saw those two threads laid joining the edges of the rent, I began to hope that I was to witness a mending process. The spider, said I to myself, will increase the number of those cross threads from end to end of the bridge and though the added piece may not match the rest of the work, at least it will fill the gap and the continuous sheet will be of the same use practically as the regular web. The reality did not answer to my expectation. The spinster's made no further endeavor all night. She hunted with her driven net for what it was worth, for I found the web next morning in the same condition wherein I had left it on the night before. There had been no mending of any kind. The two threads stretched across the bridge even must not be taken for an attempt at repairing. Finding no foothold for her legs on one side, the spider went a look into the state of things and in so doing crossed the rent. In going and returning, she left a thread as is the custom with all the appearer when walking. It was not a deliberate mending but the mere result of an uneasy change of place. Perhaps the subject of my experiment thought it unnecessary to go to fresh trouble and expense for the web can serve quite well as it is after my scissor cut. The two halves together represent the original staring surface. All that the spider seated in a central position need do is to find the requisite support for her spread legs. The two threads stretched from side to side of the cleft supply her with this or nearly. My mischief did not go far enough let us devise something better. Next day the web is renewed after the old one has been swallowed. When the work is done and the appearer seated motionless on her central post, I take a straw and wielding it dexterously so as to respect the resting floor and the spokes I pull and root up the spiral which dangles in tatters. With its nearing threads ruined, the net is useless. No passing moth would allow herself to be caught. Now what does the appearer do in the face of this disaster? Nothing at all. Motionless on her resting floor which I have left intact, she awaits the capture of the game. She awaits it all night in vain on her impotent web. In the morning I find the snare as I left it. Necessity, the mother of invention, has not prompted the spider to make a slight repair in her ruined coils. Possibly this is asking too much of her resources. The silk glands may be exhausted after the laying of the great spiral and to repeat the same expenditure immediately is out of question. I want a case wherein there could be no appeal to any such exhaustion. I obtain it thanks to my acidity. While I was watching, the rolling of the spiral ahead of game rushes fun tilt into the unfinished snare. The appearer interrupts her work, hurries to the giddy bait, suites him and takes her fill of him where he lies. During the struggle, a section of the web has turned under the weaver's very eyes. A great gap endangles the satisfactory working of the net. What will the spider do in the presence of this grievous rent? Now or never is the time to repair the broken threads. The accident has happened this very moment between the animal's legs. It is certainly known and moreover the rope works are in full swing. This time there is no question of the exhaustion of the silk warehouse. Well, under these conditions, so favorable to Darning, the appearer does no mending at all. She flings aside her prey after taking a few sips at it and resumes her spiral at the point where she interrupted it to attack the mob. The torn part remains as it is. The meshing shuttle in our looms does not revert to the spoiled fabric, even so with the spider working at her web. And this is no case of distraction of individual carelessness. All the large spin stresses suffer from a similar incapacity for patching. The bandit appearer and the silky appearer are not worthy in this respect. The angular appearer remakes her web nearly every evening. The other two reconstruct theirs only very seldom and use them even then extremely dilapidated. They go on hunting with shapeless rags before they bring themselves to weave a new web. The old one has to be ruined beyond recognition. Well, I have often noted the state of one of these ruins and the next morning I have found it as it was or even more dilapidated. Never any repairs. Never. Never. I am sorry because of the reputation which our hard-pressed theorists have given her, but the spider is absolutely unable to mend her work. In spite of her thoughtful appearance, the appearer is incapable of the modicum of reflection required to insert a piece into an accidental gap. Other spiders are unequainted with wide meshed knits and weave satins wearing the threads crossing at random form a continuous substance. Among this number is the house spider, Tegeneria domestica, Lynn. In the corner of our rooms, she stretches wide webs fixed by angular extensions. The best protected nook at one side contains the owner's secret apartment. It is a silk tube, a gallery with a conical opening, whence the spider sheltered from the eye watches events. The rest of the fabric which exceeds our finest muslin's indelicacy is not properly speaking a hunting implement. It is a platform, whereon the spider attending to the affairs of her estate goes around especially at night. The real trap consists of a confusion of lines stretched above the web. The snare constructed according to other rules than in the case of the appearer also work differently. Here are no vicious threads but plain toils rendered invisible by the very number. If a knack rush into the perfidious entanglement he is caught at once and the more he struggles the more firmly is he bound. The snarling falls on the sheet web. Tegeneria he ascends up and bites him in the neck. Having said this let us experiment a little. In the web of the house spider I make a round hole two fingers wide. The hole remains yawning all day long but next morning it is invariably closed. An extremely thin gauze covers the breach the dark appearance of which contrasts with the dense whiteness of the surrounding fabric. The gauze is so delicate that to make sure of its presence I use a straw rather than my eyes. The movement of the web when this part is touched proves the presence of an obstacle. Here the matter would appear obvious. The house spider has amended her work during the night. She has put a patch in the turnstaff a talent unknown to the garden spiders. It would be greatly to her credit if a mere attentive study did not lead to another conclusion. The web of the house spider is, as we were saying, a platform for watching and exploring. It is also a sheet into which the insects caught in the overhead rigging fall. This surface or domain subject to unlimited shocks is never strong enough especially if it is exposed to the additional burden of little bits of plaster loosened from the wall. The owner is constantly working at it, adding a new layer nightly. Every time that she issues from her tubular retreat or returns to it, she fixes the thread that hangs behind her upon the road covered. As evidence of this work, we have the direction of the surface lines, all of which, whether straight or winding, according to the fancies that guide the spider's path, converge upon the entrance of the tube. Every step taken beyond a doubt adds a filament to the web. We have here the story of the processionary of the pine, whose habits I have related elsewhere. When the caterpillars leave the silk pouch to go and browse all night and also when they enter it again, they never fail to spin a little on the surface of their nest. Each expedition adds to the thickness of the wall. When moving this way or that upon the purse which I have split from top to bottom with my scissors, the processionaries upholds the bridge even as they upholds the untouched part without paying more attention to it than to the rest of the wall. Caring nothing about the accident, they behave in the same way as on a non-gutted dwelling. The crevice is closed in course of time, not intentionally but solely by the action of the usual spinning. We arrive at the same conclusion on the subject of the house spider. Walking about a platform every night, she lays fresh courses without drawing a distinction between the solid and the hollow. She has not deliberately put a patch in the torn texture. She has simply gone on with her ordinary business. If it happened that the hole is eventually closed, this fortunate result is the outcome not of a special purpose but of an unvarying method of work. Besides, it is evident that if the spider really wished to mend her web, all her endeavors would be concentrated upon the rent. She would devote to it all the silk at her disposal and obtain in one sitting a piece very like the rest of the web. Instead of that, what do we find? Almost nothing, a hardly visible cause. The thing is obvious, the spider did on that rent what she did every elsewhere, neither more nor less. Far from squandering silk upon it, she saved her silk so as to have enough for the whole web. The gap will be better mended little by little afterwards as the sheet is strengthened all over with new layers. And this will take long. Two months later, the window, my work still shows through and makes a dark stain against the dead white of the fabric. Native weavers nor spinners therefore know how to repair their work. Those wonderful manufacturers of silk staffs lack the least glimmer of that sacred lamp, reason which enables the stupidest of downing women to mend the heel of an old stocking. The office of the inspector of spider's web would have its uses, even if it merely succeeded in ridding us of a mistaken and mischievous idea. The Spiral Network of the Apare possesses contrivances of fearsome cunning. Let us give our attention, by preference, to that of the banded Apira, or that of the silky Apira, both of which can be observed at early morning in all their freshness. The thread that forms them is seen with a naked eye to differ from that of the framework and the spokes. It glitters in the sun, looks as though it were knotted, and gives the impression of a chaplet of atoms. To examine it through the lens on the web itself is scarcely feasible, because of the shaking of the fabric which trembles at the least breath. By passing a sheet of glass under the web and lifting it I take away a few pieces of thread to study, pieces that remain fixed to the glass in parallel lines. Lenses and microscopes can now play their part. The sight is perfectly astounding. Those threads on the borderland between the visible and the invisible are very closely twisted twine, similar to the gold cord of our officers' sword-knots. Moreover, they are hollow. The infinitely slender is a tube, a channel full of viscous moisture resembling a strong solution of gum arabic. I can see a diaphanous trail of this moisture trickling through the broken ends. Under the pressure of the thin glass slide that covers them on the stage of the microscope, the twists lengthen out, become crinkled ribbons, traversed from end to end through the middle by a dark streak which is the empty container. The fluid contents must ooze slowly through the sides of those tubular threads, rolled into twisted strings, and thus render the network sticky. It is sticky, in fact, and in such a way as to provoke surprise. I bring a fine straw, flat down upon three or four rungs of a sector. However gentle the contact, adhesion, is at once established. When I lift the straw the threads come with it, and stretch to twice or three times their length, like a thread of India rubber. At last, when overtaught, they loosen without breaking and resume their original form. They lengthen by unrolling their twists, they shorten by rolling it again, and lastly they become adhesive by taking the glaze of the gummy moisture wherewith they are filled. In short, the spiral thread is a capillary tube finer than any that our physics will ever know. It is rolled into a twist, so as to possess an elasticity that allows it, without breaking, to yield to the tugs of the captured prey. It holds a supply of sticky matter in reserve in its tube, so as to renew the adhesive properties of the surface by incessant exudation, as they become impaired by exposure to the air. It is simply marvellous. The Epirah hunts not with springs, but with lime snares, and such lime snares. Everything is caught in them, down to the dandelion plume that barely brushes against them. Nevertheless the Epirah, who is in constant touch with her web, is not caught in them. Why? Let us first of all remember that the spider has contrived for herself in the middle of her trap, a floor, in whose construction the sticky spiral thread plays no part. We saw how this thread stopped suddenly at some distance from the centre. There is here, covering a space which, in the larger webs, is about equal to the palm of one's hand, a fabric formed of spokes, and of the commencement of the auxiliary spiral, a neutral fabric, in which the exploring straw finds no adhesives anywhere. Here, on this central rusting floor, and here only, the Epirah takes her stand, waiting whole days for the arrival of the game. However close, however prolonged her contact with this portion of the web, she runs no risk of sticking to it, because the gummy coating is lacking, as is the twisted and tubular structure, throughout the lengths of the spokes, and throughout the extent of the auxiliary spiral. These pieces, together with the rest of the framework, are made of plain, straight, solid thread. But when a victim is caught, sometimes right at the edge of the web, the spider has to rush up quickly to bind it and overcome its attempts to free itself. She is walking then upon her network, and I do not find that she suffers the least inconvenience. The lime threads are not even lifted by the movements of her legs. In my boyhood, when a troop of us would go on Thursdays, the weekly half-holiday in French schools, to try and catch goldfinch in the hemp fields, we used, before covering the twigs with glue, to grease our fingers with a few drops of oil, lest we should get them caught in the sticky matter. Does the IPIRA know the secret of fatty substances? Let us try. I rub my exploring straw with slightly oiled paper. When applied to the spiral thread of the web, it now no longer sticks to it. The principle is discovered. I pull out the leg of a live IPIRA, brought, just as it is, into contact with the lime threads. It does not stick to them any more than to the neutral cords, whether spokes or parts of the framework. We were entitled to expect this, judging by the spider's general immunity. But here is something that wholly alters the result. I put the leg to soak for a quarter of an hour in disulfide of carbon, the best solvent of fatty matters. I wash it carefully with a brush dipped in the same fluid. When this washing is finished, the leg sticks to the snaring thread quite easily, and adheres to it just as well as anything else would. The un-oiled straw, for instance. Did I guess a right when I judged that it was a fatty substance that preserved the IPIRA from the snares of her sticky Catherine Wheel? The action of the carbon disulfide seems to say yes. Besides, there is no reason why a substance of this kind, which plays so frequent a part in animal economy, should not coat the spider very slightly by the mere act of perspiration. We used to rub our fingers with a little oil before handling the twigs in which the gold finch was to be caught. Even so, the IPIRA varnishes herself with a special sweat to operate on any part of her web without fear of the lime threads. However, an unduly protracted stay on the sticky threads would have its drawbacks, in the long run continual contact with those threads might produce a certain adhesion and inconvenience to spider who must preserve all her agility in order to rush upon the prey before it can release itself. For this reason gummy threads are never used in building the post of interminable waiting. It is only on her resting floor that the IPIRA sits motionless and with her eight legs outspread, ready to mark the least quiver in the net. It is here again that she takes her meals and often long drawn out when the joint is a substantial one. It is hitherto that, after trussing and nibbling it, she drags her prey at the end of a thread to consume it at her ease on a non-viscous mat. As a hunting post and refractory, the IPIRA has contrived a central space free from glue. As for the glue itself, it is hardly possible to study its chemical properties because the quantity is so slight. The microscope shows it trickling from the broken threads in the form of a transparent and more or less granular streak. The following experiment will tell us more about it. With a sheet of glass passed across the web I gather a series of lime threads which remain fixed in parallel lines. I cover this sheet with a bell jar standing in a depth of water. Soon in this atmosphere, saturated with humidity, the threads become enveloped in a watery sheath which gradually increases and begins to flow. The twisted shape has by this time disappeared and the channel of the thread reveals a caplet of translucent orbs, that is to say a series of extremely fine drops. In twenty-four hours the threads have lost their contents and are reduced to almost invisible streaks. If I then lay a drop of water on the glass I get a sticky solution, similar to that which a particle of gum arabic might yield. The conclusion is evident, the IPIRA's glue is a substance that absorbs moisture freely. In an atmosphere with a high degree of humidity it becomes saturated and percolates by sweating through the sides of the tubular threads. These data explain certain facts relating to the work of the net. The full-grown banded and silky IPIRA, weave at very early hours long before dawn. Should their air turn misty they sometimes leave that part of the task unfinished. They build the general framework, they lay the spokes, they even draw the auxiliary spiral, for all these parts are unaffected by excess of moisture. But they are very careful not to work at the lime threads, which if soaked by the fog would dissolve into sticky shreds and lose their efficacy by being wetted. The net that was started will be finished tomorrow if the atmosphere be favourable. While the highly absorbent character of the snaring thread has its drawbacks, it also has compensating advantages. Both IPIRAE when hunting by day affect those hot places exposed to the fierce rays of the sun wherein crickets delight. In the torrid heats of the dog-days therefore the lime threads, but for special provisions, would be liable to dry up, to shrivel into stiff and lifeless filaments. But the very opposite happens. At the most scorching times of the day they continue supple, elastic, and more adhesive. How is this brought about? By the very powers of absorption, the moisture of which the air is never deprived penetrates them slowly, it dilutes the thick contents of their tubes to the requisite degree and causes it to ooze through, as and when the earlier stickiness decreases. What birdcatcher could vie with the garden spider in the art of laying lime snares? And all this industry and cunning for the capture of a moth? Then too, what a passion for production! Knowing the diameter of the orb and the number of coils, we can easily calculate the total length of the sticky spiral. We find that, in one sitting each time that she remakes her web, the angular apira produces some twenty yards of gummy thread. The more skillful silky apira produces thirty. Well, during two months the angular apira, my neighbor, renewed her snare nearly every morning. During that period she manufactured something like three-quarters of a mile of this tubular thread, rolled into a tight twist and bulging with glue. I should like an anatomist and doubt with better implements than mine and with less tired eyesight to explain to us the work of the marvellous rope-yard. How is the silky matter molded into a capillary tube? How is this tube filled with glue and tightly twisted? And how does this same wire mill also turn out plain threads, wrought first into a framework and then into muslin and satin, next a russet foam, such as fills the wallet of the banded apira, next the black stripes stretched in meridian curves on that same wallet. What a number of products to come from that curious factory, a spider's belly! I behold the results, but fail to understand the working of the machine. I leave the problem to the masters of the microtome and the scalpel. CHAPTER XII. THE GARDEN SPIDERS THE TELEGRAPH WIRE Of the six garden spiders that form the object of my observations, two only, the banded and the silky apira, remain constantly in their webs, even under the blinding rays of a fierce sun. The others, as a rule, do not show themselves until nightfall. At some distance from the net they have a rough and ready retreat in the brambles, an ambush made of a few leaves held together by stretched threads. It is here that for the most part they remained in the daytime, motionless and sunk in meditation. But the shrill light that vexes them is the joy of the fields. At such times, the locust hops more nimbly than ever, more gaily skims the dragonfly. Besides, the limy web, despite the rents suffered during the night, is still in serviceable condition. If some giddy pay to allow himself to be caught, will the spider at the distance where, too, she has retired, be unable to take advantage of the windfall? Never fear. She arrives in a flash. How is she apprised? Let us explain the matter. The alarm is given by the vibration of the web, much more than by the sight of the captured object. A very simple experiment will prove this. I lay upon a banded apyra's lime threads a locust that second asphyxiated with carbon disulfide. The carcass is placed in front or behind, or at either side of the spider, who sits moveless in the center of the net. If the test is to be applied to a species where the daytime hiding place amid the foliage, the dead locust is laid on the web, more or less near the center, no matter how. In both cases nothing happens at first. The apyra remains in her motionless attitude even when the morsel is at a short distance in front of her. She is indifferent to the presence of the game, does not seem to perceive it, so much that she ends by wearing out my patience. Then with a long straw which enables me to conceal myself slightly, I set the dead insect trembling. That is quite enough. The banded apyra and the silky apyra hasten to the central floor, the others come down from the branch, all go to the locust, swath him with tape, treat him in short as they would treat a live prey captured under normal conditions. It took the shaking of the web to decide them to attack. Perhaps the gray color of the locust is not sufficiently conspicuous to attract attention by itself. Then let us try red, the brightest color to our retinine, probably also to the spiders. None of the game hunted by the apyra, being clad in scarlet, I make a small bundle out of red wool, a bait of the size of a locust. I glue it to the web. My stratagem succeeds, as long as the parcel is stationary the spider is not roused, but the moment it trembles stirred by my straw she runs up eagerly. There are silly ones who just touch the thing with their legs, and without further enquiries, swath it in silk after the manner of the usual game. They even go so far as to dig their fangs into the bait, following the rule of the preliminary poisoning. Then and then only the mistake is recognized and the tricked spider retires and does not come back, unless it be long afterwards, when she flings the cumbersome object out of the web. There are also clever ones, like the others, these hastened to the red woolen lure, which my straw insidiously keeps moving. They come from their tent among the leaves as readily as from the center of the web. They explore it with their palpi and their legs, but soon perceiving that the thing is valueless, they are careful not to spend their silk on useless bonds. My quivering bait does not deceive them. It is flung out after a brief inspection. Still, the clever ones, like the silly ones, run even from a distance from their leafy ambush. How do they know? Certainly not by sight. Before recognizing their mistake, they have to hold the object between their legs and even to nibble at it a little. They are extremely short-sighted. At a hand's breadth's distance, the lifeless prey unable to shake the web remains unperceived. Besides in many cases the hunting takes place in the dense darkness of the night, when sight, even if it were good, would not avail. If the eyes are sufficient guides, even close at hand, how will it be when the prey has to be spied from afar? In that case, an intelligence apparatus for long distance work becomes indispensable. We have no difficulty in detecting the apparatus. Let us look attentively behind the web of any pyrrha with a daytime hiding-place. We shall see a thread that starts from the center of the network, ascends in a slanting line outside the plain of the web, and ends at the ambush where the spider lurks all day. Except at the central point there is no connection between this thread and the rest of the work, no interweaving with the scaffolding threads. Free of impediment the line runs straight from the center of the net to the ambush tent. Its length averages twenty-two inches. The angular pyrrha, settled high up in the trees, has shown me some as long as eight or nine feet. There is no doubt that this slanting line is a footbridge which allows the spider to repair hurriedly to the web, when summoned by urgent business, and then when her round is finished to return to her hut. In fact it is the road which I see her follow in going and coming. But is that all? No, for if the pyrrha had no aim in view, but a means of rapid transit between her tent and the net, the footbridge would be fastened to the upper edge of the web. The journey would be shorter and the slope less steep. Why, moreover, does this line always start in the center of the sticky network and nowhere else? Because that is the point where the spokes meet and, therefore, the common center of vibration. Anything that moves upon the web sets its shaking. All then that is needed is a thread issuing from this central point to convey to a distance the news of a prey struggling in some part or other of the net. The slanting cord extending outside the plane of the web is more than a footbridge. It is, above all, a signaling apparatus, a telegraph wire. Let us try experiment. I place a locust on the network. Caught in the sticky toils he plunges about, forthwith the spider issues impetuously from her hut, comes down the footbridge, makes a rush for the locust, wraps him up and operates on him according to rule. Soon after she hoists him, fastened by a line to her spinner at, and drags him to her hiding-place, where a long banquet will be held. So far nothing new. Things happen as usual. I leave the spider to mind her own affairs for some days before I interfere with her. Again I propose to give her a locust, but this time I first cut the signaling thread with the touch of the scissors, without shaking any part of the edifice. The game is then laid on the web. Complete success. The entangled insect struggles, sets the net quivering, the spider on her side does not stir, as though heedless of events. The idea might occur to one that in this business the apyrus stays motionless in her cabin, since she is prevented from hurrying down because the footbridge is broken. Let us un-deceive ourselves. For one road open to her there are a hundred, all ready to bring her to the place where her presence is now required. The network is fastened to the branches by a host of lines, all of them very easy to cross. Well, the apyra embarks upon none of them, but remains moveless and self-absorbed. Why, because her telegraph being out of order no longer tells her of the shaking of the web. The captured prey is too far off for her to see it. She is all unwitting. A good hour passes, with the locust still kicking, the spider impassive, myself watching. Nevertheless, in the end, the apyra wakes up, no longer feeling the signaling thread, broken by my scissors. As taught as usual under her legs, she comes to look into the state of things. The web is reached without the least difficulty by one of the lines of the framework, the first that offers. The locust is then perceived and forthwith unswathed, after which the signaling thread is remade, taking the place of the one which I have broken. Along this road the spider goes home dragging her prey behind her. My neighbor, the mighty angular apyra, with her telegraph wire nine feet long, has even better things in store for me. One morning I find her web which is now deserted, almost intact, a proof that the night's hunting has not been good. The animal must be hungry. With a piece of game for a bait, I hope to bring her down from her lofty retreat. I entangle in the web a rare morsel, a dragonfly, who struggles desperately and sets the whole net aflaking. The other, up above, leaves her lurking place amid the cypress foliage, strides swiftly down along her telegraph wire, comes to the dragonfly, trusses her and at once climbs home again by the same road, with her prize dangling at her heels by a thread. The final sacrifice will take place in the quiet of the leafy sanctuary. A few days later I renew my experiment under the same conditions, but this time I first cut the signalling thread. In vain I select a large dragonfly, a very restless prisoner. In vain I exert my patience. The spider does not come down all day. Her telegraph being broken she receives no notice of what is happening nine feet below. The entangled morsel remains where it lies, not despised but unknown. At nightfall the apyra leaves her cabin, passes over the ruins of her web, finds the dragonfly and eats her on the spot, after which the net is renewed. One of the apyrae whom I have had the opportunity of examining simplifies the system, while retaining the central mechanism of a transmission thread. This is the crater of Pyra, a Pyra Cratera, a species seen in spring at which time she indulges especially in the chase of the domestic bee upon the flowering rosemaries. At the leafy end of a branch she builds a sort of silken shell the shape and size of an acorn cup. This is where she sits, with her punch contained in the round cavity and her forelegs resting on the ledge, ready to leap. The lazy creature loves this position and rarely stations herself, head downwards on the web, as do the others. Cozely and sconst in the hollow of her cup she awaits the approaching game. Her web, which is vertical, as is the rule among the apyrae, is of a fair size and always very near the bowl where in the spider takes her ease. Moreover it touches the bowl by means of an angular extension, and the angle always contains one spoke which the apyrae ceded, so to speak, in her crater, as constantly under her legs. This spoke, springing from the common focus of the vibrations from all parts of the network, is eminently fitted to keep the spider informed of what so ever happens. It has a double office, it forms part of the Catherine wheel supporting the lime threads, and it warns the apyrae by its vibrations. A special thread is here superfluous. The other snareers, on the contrary, who occupy a distant retreat by day, cannot do without a private wire that keeps them in permanent communication with the deserted web. All of them have one, in point of fact, but only when age comes, age prone to rest and to long slumbers. In their youth the apyrae who are then very wide awake know nothing of the art of telegraphy. Besides, their web, a short-lived work where I've hardly a trace remains on the morrow, does not allow of this kind of industry. It is of 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 apyrae with a remarkably fine belly, has spun her web between two lauristine 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 manner, 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 hindquarters, which bar the entrance to the dungeon. With her front half plunged into the back of her hut, the apyra certainly cannot see her web. Even if she had good sight, instead of being purblind, her position 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 signalling thread ends just at the tip of that leg. Whoso has not seen the apyrae in this attitude, with her hand, so to speak, on the telegraph receiver, knows nothing of one of the most curious instances of animal cleverness. Let any game appear upon the scene, and the slumberer fourth width, aroused by means of the leg perceiving the vibrations, hastens up. A locust whom I myself lay on the web, procures her this agreeable shock and what follows. If she is satisfied with her bag, I am still more satisfied with what I have learned. The occasion is too good not to find out, under better conditions as regards approach, what the inhabitant of the cypress trees has already shown me. The next morning I cut the telegraph wire, this time as long as one's arm and held, like yesterday, by one of the hind legs stretched outside the cabin. I then place on the web a double-prey, a dragonfly and a locust. The latter kicks out with his long spurred shanks the other flutters her wings. The web is tossed about to such an extent that a number of leaves just beside the apyrae's nest move shaken by the threads of the framework affixed to them, and this vibration, though so close at hand, does not rouse the spider in the least, does not make her even turn round to inquire what is going on. The moment that her signalling thread ceases to work, she knows nothing of passing events. All day long she remains without stirring, in the evening, at eight o'clock she sallies forth to weave the new web, and at last finds the rich windfall whereof she was hitherto unaware. One word more. The web is often shaken by the wind. The different parts of the framework tossed and teased by the eddying air occurrence cannot fail to transmit their vibration to the signalling thread. Nevertheless the spider does not quit her hut and remains indifferent to the commotion prevailing in the net. Her line therefore is something better than a bell rope that pulls and communicates the impulse given. It is a telephone capable, like our own, of transmitting infinitesimal waves of sound. Clutching her telephone wire with a toe, the spider listens with her leg. She perceives the innermost vibrations. She distinguishes between the vibration proceeding from a prisoner and the mere shaking caused by the wind.