CHAPTER 10. THE BANDED EPEIRA.

BUILDING THE WEB.

The fowling-snare is one of man's ingenious villainies. With lines,
pegs and poles, two large, earth-coloured nets are stretched upon the
ground, one to the right, the other to the left of a bare surface. A
long cord, pulled at the right moment by the fowler, who hides in a
brushwood hut, works them and brings them together suddenly, like a
pair of shutters.

Divided between the two nets are the cages of the decoy-birds--Linnets
and Chaffinches, Greenfinches and Yellowhammers, Buntings and
Ortolans--sharp-eared creatures which, on perceiving the distant
passage of a flock of their own kind, forthwith utter a short calling
note. One of them, the Sambe, an irresistible tempter, hops about and
flaps his wings in apparent freedom. A bit of twine fastens him to his
convict's stake. When, worn with fatigue and driven desperate by his
vain attempts to get away, the sufferer lies down flat and refuses to
do his duty, the fowler is able to stimulate him without stirring from
his hut. A long string sets in motion a little lever working on a
pivot. Raised from the ground by this diabolical contrivance, the bird
flies, falls down and flies up again at each jerk of the cord.

The fowler waits, in the mild sunlight of the autumn morning. Suddenly,
great excitement in the cages. The Chaffinches chirp their rallying
cry:

"Pinck! Pinck!"

There is something happening in the sky. The Sambe, quick! They are
coming, the simpletons; they swoop down upon the treacherous floor.
With a rapid movement, the man in ambush pulls his string. The nets
close and the whole flock is caught.

Man has wild beast's blood in his veins. The fowler hastens to the
slaughter. With his thumb he stifles the beating of the captives'
hearts, staves in their skulls. The little birds, so many piteous heads
of game, will go to market, strung in dozens on a wire passed through
their nostrils.

For scoundrelly ingenuity, the Epeira's net can bear comparison with
the fowler's; it even surpasses it when, on patient study, the main
features of its supreme perfection stand revealed. What refinement of
art for a mess of Flies! Nowhere, in the whole animal kingdom, has the
need to eat inspired a more cunning industry. If the reader will
meditate upon the description that follows, he will certainly share my
admiration.

In bearing and colouring, Epeira fasciata is the handsomest of the
Spiders of the South. On h