Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/850

830 guests in the web of larger ones. The general charge of cruelty may have arisen from the conduct of some of the Epeira family, one of the largest and gayest in dress, as well as the most common and widely distributed of the spider tribes.

A noteworthy member of this family found by the naturalist in the Challenger Expedition (E. clavipes) makes a web so strong that even birds are made prisoners by it, though whether the spider devours them does not appear. On the same expedition another was observed which possessed a more imposing residence, having by way of an upper story a globular mass of irregular threads over her horizontal "first floor." In this attic lived her spouse, a minute creature after the spider fashion of mates. Between his quarters and the parlor, where madam herself, the builder and provider, had her place, hung suspended the precious egg-bags, or nurseries, three or four in number, of different ages.

The cunning—not to say the intelligence—of the race, is shown by some in their unique method of concealing themselves from a known or suspected enemy, while remaining in plain sight all the time. It is by a violent shaking of the web, which, being extremely elastic, vibrates so rapidly as to confuse the outlines of the substantial body standing in the center and causing all the commotion. Could she have invented a more ingenious way if she had been a learned scientist?

The mania for decoration has reached, or possibly it began with, the spinning sisterhood. Dr. McCook describes some curious examples. There is the bank Argiope, a personage in silver drab, who makes for her own special use a white silken carpet in the middle of her large round web. From the top of the carpet reaches a ribbon of the same, and from the bottom descends a zigzag cord like the famous "winding stair" of the old song. Resting, head down, in her place, she is able to defy ordinary enemies, for she knows the trick of shaking her web until her body is absolutely invisible. Unlike many of the family, she prepares her nursery out of the house, forming a tent by lashing leaves or grasses together, and fastening securely within it a pear-shaped cocoon. This cradle, which is to swing in its airy tent all winter, is glazed outside, but within a mass of soft, silken blankets which wrap the eggs from all harm.

A near relation of this prudent mother, the banded Argiope, in white furry coat, decorates her symmetrical web from top to bottom with ladders of white silk. Decoration reaches its lowest form in a web described by the same observer, where the cocoons, the precious cradles of the household, are covered with cast-off shells and gauzy wings left from past and gone feasts—whether as "souvenirs" of the occasions, or to disguise the true character