Page:The Life of the Spider.djvu/28

The Life of the Spider is a wide belt of a dead black; on the sides, a large white zone with four big, black spots evenly distributed. The lid, surrounded by snowy cilia and encircled with white at the edge, swells into a black cap with a white knot in the centre. Altogether, a dismal burial urn, with the sudden contrast between the dead black and the fleecy white. The funeral pottery of the ancient Etruscans would have found a magnificent model here.'

The little bug, whose forehead is too soft, covers her head, to raise the lid of the box, with a mitre formed of three triangular rods, which is always at the bottom of the egg at the moment of delivery. Her limbs being sheathed like those of a mummy, she has nothing wherewith to put her tringles in motion except the pulsations produced by the rhythmic flow of blood in her skull and acting after the manner of a piston. The rivets of the lid gradually give way; and, as soon as the insect is free, she lays aside her mechanical helmet.

Another species of bug, the Reduvius personatus, which lives mostly in lumber-rooms, where it lies hidden in the dust, has invented 24