Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/811

 only a small quantity of silk, they hide themselves in cracks in the walls or in fissures of bark in the shadow of the foliage, and make themselves a lodge out of a smooth or flossy tissue. At the laying of its eggs, the jumper shuts itself up in its shell. One species deposits its eggs without any covering; a more fortunate species incloses them in a sack with thin and almost diaphanous walls. Not having the faculty of spinning webs, the saltatory spiders are hunters, and have to fast if the weather is bad. On pleasant days they are to be found all around, and, having eyes all over the cephalic region, some of them quite small and others of enormous size, they can look accurately through all the surrounding space, which they explore slowly and with care. If a fly is in sight, the spider lances itself upon it with dizzy rapidity. It measures its distance so well that it rarely misses; but, if this should happen, no harm comes to it, for it has fixed a thread to its starting-point, which, unrolling as it leaps, prevents its striking upon the ground, and affords an easy road back to its position.



Some spiders are wealthy, having at their disposal an immense quantity of textile matter, which is renewed continually; others produce but little, and have to live in cells under stones or dead leaves, in the cracks of trees, and in walls. They have to hunt their game in the fields, along the edges of the water, or among aquatic plants. They are the Lycosœ. (Fig. 3). The smaller, dark-colored species of central Europe have little to attract the eye; but occasionally the attention of the careful observer is directed