It is, in fact, to be presumed that the thick tufts of certain grasses will afford them shelter. This abiding-place, where the sucker will sink into the sweet root-fibres, and where the drip of rain or snow does not easily find access, is beloved by several Plant-lice. Those of the terebinth also may very well take up their winter-quarters there. As for what happens in these subterranean lairs, we are reduced to more or less probable conjectures. [[290]]
[1] 1⁄25 inch.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
CHAPTER V
THE DORTHESIA
After the exodus of the young, when she deserts her tent of swansdown, half a finger’s-breadth in thickness, very warm and soft, but blocked with rubbish which would hamper a second family, the Clotho Spider[1] proceeds to fashion elsewhere a light hammock with a canopy, an inexpensive summer-house where she will pass the remainder of the warm weather. Those who are not yet marriageable ask no better protection against the inclemencies of the winter; their robust powers of endurance are satisfied with a muslin tent under the shelter of a stone.
The matrons, on the other hand, as the heat begins to decrease, hasten to enlarge and strengthen their cells, lavishing upon them the contents of their silk-reservoirs, which the hunting-expeditions of the fine summer [[291]]nights have left distended. When the sharp white-frosts set in they will doubtless find more comfort in their luxurious mansions than in the first rickety hovels; nevertheless, they do not build them precisely for themselves but rather for the use of their expected offspring; wherefore the walls are never stout nor the feather-beds downy enough.
The superb structure of the Clotho is above all a nest, beside which those of the Chaffinch and the Siskin are but squatter’s huts. The mother, it is true, does not sit upon her eggs, being as she is without an incubator; she does not feed her offspring, who for that matter do not require her assistance; but the part which she plays is, none the less, one of exquisite tenderness. For seven or eight months she watches over her brood, protecting it with a devotion equal to that of the bird, or even greater.
Maternity, the supreme inspiration of the noblest instincts, has thousands upon thousands of masterpieces to bear witness to its skill. Let us recall that of the Labyrinth Spider.[2] What a wonderful achievement is [[292]]the spacious building where the mother mounts guard about the star-shaped tabernacle, the family cradle! What an eminently logical stronghold is this rampart of silk reinforced by masonry, to protect the eggs from the probe of the Ichneumon-fly!