CHAPTER XXIV
THE BUILDING OF A SPIDER’S WEB
The smallest garden contains the Garden Spiders, all clever weavers.
Let us go every evening, step by step, from one border of tall rosemaries to the next. Should things move too slowly, we will sit down at the foot of the shrubs, where the light falls favorably, and watch with unwearying attention. Let us give ourselves a title, “Inspector of Spiders’ Webs!” There are not many people in that profession, and we shan’t make any money by it; but never mind, we shall learn some very interesting things.
The Spiders I watch are young ones, much slenderer than they will be in the late autumn. They work by day, work even in the sun, whereas the old ones weave only at night. Work starts in July, a couple of hours before sunset.
The spinstresses of my inclosures then leave their daytime hiding-places, choose their posts and begin to spin, one here, another there. There are many of them; we can choose where we please. Let us stop in front of this one, whom we surprise in the act of laying the foundations of her web. She runs about the rosemary hedge, from the tip of one branch to another, within the limits of some eighteen inches. Gradually, she puts a thread in position, drawing it from her body with the combs attached to her hind-legs. She comes and goes impetuously, as though at random; she goes up, comes down, goes up again, dives down again and each time strengthens the points of contact with threads distributed here and there. The result is a sort of frame. The shapeless structure is what she wishes; it marks out a flat, free, and perpendicular space. This is all that is necessary.
A special thread, the foundation of the stronger net which will be built later, is stretched across the area of the other. It can be told from the others by its isolation, its position at a distance from any twig that might interfere with its swaying length. It never fails to have, in the middle, a thick white point, formed of a little silk cushion.
The time has come to weave the hunting-snare. The Spider starts from the center, which bears the white signpost, and, running along the cross-thread, hurriedly reaches the circumference, that is to say, the irregular frame inclosing the free space. Still with the same sudden movement, she rushes from the outside to the center; she starts again backwards and forwards, makes for the right, the left, the top, the bottom; she hoists herself up, dives down, climbs up again, runs down and always returns to the central landmark by roads that slant in the most unexpected manner. Each time a radius or spoke is laid, here, there, or elsewhere, in what looks like mad disorder.
