What bird-catcher could vie with the Garden Spider in the art of laying lime-snares?
And all this industry and cunning for the capture of a Moth! I should like an anatomist endowed with better implements than mine and with less tired eyesight to explain to us the work of the marvellous rope-yard.

How is the silken matter moulded into a capillary tube?
How is this tube filled with glue and tightly twisted?
And how does this same mill also turn out plain threads, wrought first into a framework and then into muslin and satin?
What a number of products to come from that curious factory, a Spider's belly! I behold the results, but fail to understand the working of the machine.

I leave the problem to the masters of the microtome and the scalpel.
THE HUNT.
The Epeirae are monuments of patience in their lime-snare.

With her head down and her eight legs widespread, the Spider occupies the centre of the web, the receiving-point of the information sent along the spokes.

If anywhere, behind or before, a vibration occur, the sign of a capture, the Epeira knows about it, even without the aid of sight.