,
leaves her lurking-place amid the cypress-foliage, strides swiftly down
along her telegraph-wire, comes to the Dragon-fly, trusses her and at
once climbs home again by the same road, with her prize dangling at her
heels by a thread. The final sacrifice will take place in the quiet of
the leafy sanctuary.

A few days later I renew my experiment under the same conditions, but,
this time, I first cut the signalling-thread. In vain I select a large
Dragon-fly, a very restless prisoner; in vain I exert my patience: the
Spider does not come down all day. Her telegraph being broken, she
receives no notice of what is happening nine feet below. The entangled
morsel remains where it lies, not despised, but unknown. At nightfall
the Epeira leaves her cabin, passes over the ruins of her web, finds
the Dragon-fly and eats him on the spot, after which the net is
renewed.

The Epeirae, who occupy a distant retreat by day, cannot do without a
private wire that keeps them in permanent communication with the
deserted web. All of them have one, in point of fact, but only when age
comes, age prone to rest and to long slumbers. In their youth, the
Epeirae, who are then very wide awake, know nothing of the art of
telegraphy. Besides, their web, a short-lived work whereof hardly a
trace remains on the morrow, does not allow of this kind of industry.
It is no use going to the expense of a signalling-apparatus for a
ruined snare wherein nothing can now be caught. Only the old Spiders,
meditating or dozing in their green tent, are warned from afar, by
telegraph, of what takes place on the web.

To save herself from keeping a close watch that would degenerate into
drudgery and to remain alive to events even when resting, with her back
turned on the net, the ambushed Spider always has her foot upon the
telegraph-wire. Of my observations on this subject, let me relate the
following, which will be sufficient for our purpose.

An Angular Epeira, with a remarkably fine belly, has spun her web
between two laurustine-shrubs, covering a width of nearly a yard. The
sun beats upon the snare, which is abandoned long before dawn. The
Spider is in her day manor, a resort easily discovered by following the
telegraph-wire. It is a vaulted chamber of dead leaves, joined together
with a few bits of silk. The refuge is deep: the Spider disappears in
it entirely, all but her rounded hind-quarters, which bar the entrance
to her donjon.

With her front half