Page:The Life of the Spider.djvu/252

 CHAPTER X THE GARDEN SPIDERS: MY NEIGHBOUR

GE does not modify the Epeira's talent in any essential feature. As the young worked, so do the old, the richer by a year's experience. There are no masters nor apprentices in their guild; all know their craft from the moment that the first thread is laid. We have learnt something from the novices: 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 ropes 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 Epeira (Epeira angulata, .), clad in grey and girdled with two dark stripes that meet in a point at the back.