Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/846

826 expecting to see the vaunted bloodthirstiness which should end in the death of the intruder. How did the friends behave? They simply avoided her, as one whose ways were unfamiliar. And the stranger—did she cower in fear, or show fight? Neither. Finding herself at liberty and comfortable, she proceeded at once to business, and, when the owner of the menagerie came back after several hours, he found the new-comer had nearly filled the box with her web, while the rightful owners thereof were crowded into a corner, meekly submitting to her usurpation of their quarters.

Babyhood is almost unknown in the spider world, or at least there is very little of the helplessness of most young creatures. It is hard indeed to believe the terrible tales told by Prof. Wilder of the life that goes on in the family before the nursery doors are opened. He affirms that the cocoon of Epeira riparia contains hundreds, perhaps thousands of eggs, and that the doors of the silken tent are not opened for some weeks after hatching, which is a time of fearful orgies, brother and sister devouring each other, without fighting it is true, but none the less relentlessly enacting the tragedy of the "survival of the fittest." The professor thinks he is justified in his conclusions, but we can afford to wait for further proof, and not believe it until we must.

The young arachnid, whatever her cocoon experiences, comes out of that snug home with all her wits about her, and is a very knowing baby indeed. The young trap-door spider very early in life, having attained the size of a large pin's head, makes for herself in the ground a silk-lined residence, and defends it against friend and foe. The common house spider no sooner leaves the home nest than she

 "takes Her silken ladders out and makes No halt, no secret, scaling where She likes, and weaving scaffolds there."

The garden spider, too, begins life for herself very early, spinning a web as big as a silver quarter, and as pretty as her mamma's.

The crowning glory of this queen of spinners and weavers is her motherhood. Never was a mother more devoted. In spite of the fact that her family numbers anywhere from one to ten hundred, she wraps the eggs snugly in silk, and carries them everywhere she goes, or carefully secretes them; and she defends them with her life. Not one, from the least to the greatest, abandons the helpless infants to an ignorant nurse to be pinched or petted according to the humor of that functionary—not one!

When the babies outgrow the nursery, she opens the door and sometimes takes them all on her back, though they cover her like a blanket. Then she feeds them, either with ants or flies, which