To make the eider-down quilt, she turns out reddish-brown silk, finer than the other and coming out in clouds which she beats into a sort of froth with her hind-legs. The egg-pocket disappears, drowned in this exquisite wadding.
Again she changes her material, making the white silk of the outer wrapper. Already the bag has taken its balloon shape, tapering towards the neck. She now decorates the nest with brown markings, making for this purpose still a different kind of silk, varying in color from russet to black. When this is done, the work is finished.
What a wonderful silk-factory the Spider runs! With a very simple and never-varying plant, consisting of her own hind-legs and spinnerets, she produces, by turns, rope-maker’s, spinner’s, weaver’s, ribbon-maker’s and felt-maker’s work. How does she do it? How can she obtain, as she wishes, skeins of different colors and grades? How does she turn them out, first in this fashion, then in that? I see the results, but I do not understand the machinery and still less the process. It beats me altogether.
When the Spider has finished her nest, she moves away with slow strides, without giving a glance at the bag. The rest does not interest her: time and the sun will hatch the eggs. By weaving the house for her children she has used up all her silk. If she returned to her web now, she would not have any with which to bind her prey. Besides, she no longer has any appetite. Withered and languid, she drags out her existence for a few days and, at last, dies. This is how things happen when I keep the Spiders in my cages; this is how they must happen in the brushwood.
THE BANDED SPIDER’S FAMILY
The pretty orange-yellow eggs of the Banded Spider number above five hundred. They are inclosed, you will remember, in a white-satin nest, in which there is no opening of any kind. How will the little Spiders get out, when their time comes and their mother is not there to help them?
The animal and vegetable kingdoms are sometimes very much alike. The Spider’s nest seems to me like an animal fruit, which holds eggs instead of seeds. Now seeds have all sorts of ways of scattering. The fruit of the garden balsam, when ripe, splits, at the least touch, into five fleshy valves, which curl up and shoot their seeds to a distance. You all know the jewel-weeds, or touch-me-nots, along the wayside, whose seed pods explode when you touch them. Then there are light seeds, like the dandelion, which have tufts or plumes to carry them away. The “keys” of the elm are formed of a broad, light fan with the seed cased in the center; those of the maple are joined in pairs and are like the unfurled wings of a bird; those of the ash, carved like the blade of an oar, perform the most distant journeys when driven before the storm. Like the plant, the insect also sometimes has ways of shooting its large families out into the world. You will notice this in the case of many Spiders, and particularly this Banded Spider.
As March comes on the Spiders begin to hatch out inside the nest. If we cut it open with the scissors we shall find some scattered over the eider-down outside the center room, and some still in the orange eggs. The little Spiders have not got their beautiful banded dresses yet; they are pale yellow on top, with black-rimmed eyes, and white and brown underneath. They stay in the outer room of the nest for four months, during which time their bodies harden and they grow mature.