She
does not fasten her Bee, who, dying suddenly of a bite in the neck,
offers no resistance to her consumer. Carried away by his recollection
of the regular tactics, our Spider's godfather overlooked the exception;
he did not know of the perfidious mode of attack which renders the use of
a bow-string superfluous.

Nor is the second name of _onustus_--loaded, burdened, freighted--any too
happily chosen. The fact that the Bee-huntress carries a heavy paunch is
no reason to refer to this as a distinctive characteristic. Nearly all
Spiders have a voluminous belly, a silk-warehouse where, in some cases,
the rigging of the net, in others, the swan's-down of the nest is
manufactured. The Thomisus, a first-class nest-builder, does like the
rest: she hoards in her abdomen, but without undue display of obesity,
the wherewithal to house her family snugly.

Can the expression _onustus_ refer simply to her slow and sidelong walk?
The explanation appeals to me, without satisfying me fully. Except in
the case of a sudden alarm, every Spider maintains a sober gait and a
wary pace. When all is said, the scientific term is composed of a
misconception and a worthless epithet. How difficult it is to name
animals rationally! Let us be indulgent to the nomenclator: the
dictionary is becoming exhausted and the constant flood that requires
cataloguing mounts incessantly, wearing out our combinations of
syllables.

As the technical name tells the reader nothing, how shall he be informed?
I see but one means, which is to invite him to the May festivals, in the
waste-lands of the South. The murderess of the Bees is of a chilly
constitution; in our parts, she hardly ever moves away from the olive-
districts. Her favourite shrub is the white-leaved rock-rose (_Cistus
albidus_), with the large, pink, crumpled, ephemeral blooms that last but
a morning and are replaced, next day, by fresh flowers, which have
blossomed in the cool dawn. This glorious efflorescence goes on for five
or six weeks.

Here, the Bees plunder enthusiastically, fussing and bustling in the
spacious whorl of the stamens, which beflour them with yellow. Their
persecutrix knows of this affluence. She posts herself in her
watch-house, under the rosy screen of a petal. Cast your eyes over the
flower, more or less everywhere. If you see a Bee lying lifeless, with
legs and tongue out-stretched, draw nearer: the Thomisus will be there,
nine times out of ten. The th