THE NARBONNE LYCOSA

The Epeira, who displays such astonishing industry to give her eggs a

dwelling-house of incomparable perfection, becomes, after that, careless

of her family. For what reason? She lacks the time. She has to die

when the first cold comes, whereas the eggs are destined to pass the

winter in their downy snuggery. The desertion of the nest is inevitable,

owing to the very force of things. But, if the hatching were earlier and

took place in the Epeira's lifetime, I imagine that she would rival the

bird in devotion.



So I gather from the, analogy of _Thomisus onustus_, WALCK., a shapely

Spider who weaves no web, lies in wait for her prey and walks sideways,

after the manner of the Crab. I have spoken elsewhere {22} of her

encounters with the Domestic Bee, whom she jugulates by biting her in the

neck.



Skilful in the prompt despatch of her prey, the little Crab Spider is no

less well-versed in the nesting art. I find her settled on a privet in

the enclosure. Here, in the heart of a cluster of flowers, the luxurious

creature plaits a little pocket of white satin, shaped like a wee

thimble. It is the receptacle for the eggs. A round, flat lid, of a

felted fabric, closes the mouth.



Above this ceiling rises a dome of stretched threads and faded flowerets

which have fallen from the cluster. This is the watcher's belvedere, her

conning-tower. An opening, which is always free, gives access to this

post.



Here the Spider remains on constant duty. She has thinned greatly since

she laid her eggs, has almost lost her corporation. At the least alarm,

she sallies forth, waves a threatening limb at the passing stranger and

invites him, with a gesture, to keep his distance. Having put the

intruder to flight, she quickly returns indoors.



And what does she do in there, under her arch of withered flowers and

silk? Night and day, she shields the precious eggs with her poor body

spread out flat. Eating is neglected. No more lying in wait, no more

Bees drained to the last drop of blood. Motionless, rapt in meditation,

the Spider is in an incubating posture, in other words, she is sitting on

her eggs. Strictly speaking, the word 'incubating' means that and

nothing else.



The brooding Hen is no more assiduous, but she is also a

heating-apparatus and, with the gentle warmth of her body, awakens the

germs to life. For the Spider, the heat of the sun suffices; and this

alone keeps me from saying that she 'broods.'



For two or three weeks, more and more wrinkled by abstinence, the little

Spider never relaxes her position. Then comes the hatching. The

youngsters stretch a few threads in swing-like curves from twig to twig.

The tiny rope-dancers practise for some days in the sun; then they

disperse, each intent upon his own affairs.



Let us now look at the watch-tower of the nest. The mother is still

there, but this time lifeless. The devoted creature has known the

delight of seeing her family born; she has assisted the weaklings through

the trap-door; and, when her duty was done, very gently she died. The

Hen does not reach this height of self-abnegation.



Other Spiders do better still, as, for instance, the Narbonne Lycosa, or

Black-bellied Tarantula (_Lycosa narbonnensis_, WALCK.), whose prowess

has been described in an earlier chapter. The reader will remember her

burrow, her pit of a bottle-neck's width, dug in the pebbly soil beloved

by the lavender and the thyme. The mouth is rimmed by a bastion of

gravel and bits of wood cemented with silk. There is nothing else around

her dwelling: no web, no snares of any kind.



From her inch-high turret, the Lycosa lies in wait for the passing

Locust. She gives a bound, pursues the prey and suddenly deprives it of

motion with a bite in the neck. The game is consumed on the spot, or

else in the lair; the insect's tough hide arouses no disgust. The sturdy

huntress is not a drinker of blood, like the Epeira; she needs solid

food, food that crackles between the jaws. She is like a Dog devouring

his bone.



Would you care to bring her to the light of day from the depths of her

well? Insert a thin straw into the burrow and move it about. Uneasy as

to what is happening above, the recluse hastens to climb up and stops, in

a threatening attitude, at some distance from the orifice. You see her

eight eyes gleaming like diamonds in the dark; you see her powerful

poison-fangs yawning, ready to bite. He who is not accustomed to the

sight of this horror, rising from under the ground, cannot suppress a

shiver. B-r-r-r-r! Let us leave the beast alone.



Chance, a poor stand-by, sometimes contrives very well. At the beginning

of the month of August, the children call me to the far side of the

enclosure, rejoicing in a find which they have made under the rosemary-

bushes. It is a magnificent Lycosa, with an enormous belly, the sign of

an impending delivery.



The obese Spider is gravely devouring something in the midst of a circle

of onlookers. And what? The remains of a Lycosa a little smaller than

herself, the remains of her male. It is the end of the tragedy that

concludes the nuptials. The sweetheart is eating her lover. I allow the

matrimonial rites to be fulfilled in all their horror; and, when the last

morsel of the unhappy wretch has been scrunched up, I incarcerate the

terrible matron under a cage standing in an earthen pan filled with sand.



Early one morning, ten days later, I find her preparing for her

confinement. A silk network is first spun on the ground, covering an

extent about equal to the palm of one's hand. It is coarse and

shapeless, but firmly fixed. This is the floor on which the Spider means

to operate.



On this foundation, which acts as a protection from the sand, the Lycosa

fashions a round mat, the size of a two-franc piece and made of superb

white silk. With a gentle, uniform movement, which might be regulated by

the wheels of a delicate piece of clockwork, the tip of the abdomen rises

and falls, each time touching the supporting base a little farther away,

until the extreme scope of the mechanism is attained.



Then, without the Spider's moving her position, the oscillation is

resumed in the opposite direction. By means of this alternate motion,

interspersed with numerous contacts, a segment of the sheet is obtained,

of a very accurate texture. When this is done, the Spider moves a little

along a circular line and the loom works in the same manner on another

segment.



The silk disk, a sort of hardly concave paten, now no longer receives

aught from the spinnerets in its centre; the marginal belt alone

increases in thickness. The piece thus becomes a bowl-shaped porringer,

surrounded by a wide, flat edge.



The time for the laying has come. With one quick emission, the viscous,

pale-yellow eggs are laid in the basin, where they heap together in the

shape of a globe which projects largely outside the cavity. The

spinnerets are once more set going. With short movements, as the tip of

the abdomen rises and falls to weave the round mat, they cover up the

exposed hemisphere. The result is a pill set in the middle of a circular

carpet.



The legs, hitherto idle, are now working. They take up and break off one

by one the threads that keep the round mat stretched on the coarse

supporting network. At the same time, the fangs grip this sheet, lift it

by degrees, tear it from its base and fold it over upon the globe of

eggs. It is a laborious operation. The whole edifice totters, the floor

collapses, fouled with sand. By a movement of the legs, those soiled

shreds are cast aside. Briefly, by means of violent tugs of the fangs,

which pull, and broom-like efforts of the legs, which clear away, the

Lycosa extricates the bag of eggs and removes it as a clear-cut mass,

free from any adhesion.



It is a white-silk pill, soft to the touch and glutinous. Its size is

that of an average cherry. An observant eye will notice, running

horizontally around the middle, a fold which a needle is able to raise

without breaking it. This hem, generally undistinguishable from the rest

of the surface, is none other than the edge of the circular mat, drawn

over the lower hemisphere. The other hemisphere, through which the

youngsters will go out, is less well fortified: its only wrapper is the

texture spun over the eggs immediately after they were laid.



Inside, there is nothing but the eggs: no mattress, no soft eiderdown,

like that of the Epeirae. The Lycosa, indeed, has no need to guard her

eggs against the inclemencies of the winter, for the hatching will take

place long before the cold weather comes. Similarly, the Thomisus, with

her early brood, takes good care not to incur useless expenditure: she

gives her eggs, for their protection, a simple purse of satin.



The work of spinning, followed by that of tearing, is continued for a

whole morning, from five to nine o'clock. Worn out with fatigue, the

mother embraces her dear pill and remains motionless. I shall see no

more to-day. Next morning, I find the Spider carrying the bag of eggs

slung from her stern.



Henceforth, until the hatching, she does not leave go of the precious

burden, which, fastened to the spinnerets by a short ligament, drags and

bumps along the ground. With this load banging against her heels, she

goes about her business; she walks or rests, she seeks her prey, attacks

it and devours it. Should some accident cause the wallet to drop off, it

is soon replaced. The spinnerets touch it somewhere, anywhere, and that

is enough: adhesion is at once restored.



The Lycosa is a stay-at-home. She never goes out except to snap up some

game passing within her hunting-domains, near the burrow. At the end of

August, however, it is not unusual to meet her roaming about, dragging

her wallet behind her. Her hesitations make one think that she is

looking for her home, which she has left for the moment and has a

difficulty in finding.



Why these rambles? There are two reasons: first the pairing and then the

making of the pill. There is a lack of space in the burrow, which

provides only room enough for the Spider engaged in long contemplation.

Now the preparations for the egg-bag require an extensive flooring, a

supporting framework about the size of one's hand, as my caged prisoner

has shown us. The Lycosa has not so much space at her disposal, in her

well; hence the necessity for coming out and working at her wallet in the

open air, doubtless in the quiet hours of the night.



The meeting with the male seems likewise to demand an excursion. Running

the risk of being eaten alive, will he venture to plunge into his lady's

cave, into a lair whence flight would be impossible? It is very

doubtful. Prudence demands that matters should take place outside. Here

at least there is some chance of beating a hasty retreat which will

enable the rash swain to escape the attacks of his horrible bride.



The interview in the open air lessens the danger without removing it

entirely. We had proof of this when we caught the Lycosa in the act of

devouring her lover aboveground, in a part of the enclosure which had

been broken for planting and which was therefore not suitable for the

Spider's establishment. The burrow must have been some way off; and the

meeting of the pair took place at the very spot of the tragic

catastrophe. Although he had a clear road, the male was not quick enough

in getting away and was duly eaten.



After this cannibal orgy, does the Lycosa go back home? Perhaps not, for

a while. Besides, she would have to go out a second time, to manufacture

her pill on a level space of sufficient extent.



When the work is done, some of them emancipate themselves, think they

will have a look at the country before retiring for good and all. It is

these whom we sometimes meet wandering aimlessly and dragging their bag

behind them. Sooner or later, however, the vagrants return home; and the

month of August is not over before a straw rustled in any burrow will

bring the mother up, with her wallet slung behind her. I am able to

procure as many as I want and, with them, to indulge in certain

experiments of the highest interest.



It is a sight worth seeing, that of the Lycosa dragging her treasure

after her, never leaving it, day or night, sleeping or waking, and

defending it with a courage that strikes the beholder with awe. If I try

to take the bag from her, she presses it to her breast in despair, hangs

on to my pincers, bites them with her poison-fangs. I can hear the

daggers grating on the steel. No, she would not allow herself to be

robbed of the wallet with impunity, if my fingers were not supplied with

an implement.



By dint of pulling and shaking the pill with the forceps, I take it from

the Lycosa, who protests furiously. I fling her in exchange a pill taken

from another Lycosa. It is at once seized in the fangs, embraced by the

legs and hung on to the spinneret. Her own or another's: it is all one

to the Spider, who walks away proudly with the alien wallet. This was to

be expected, in view of the similarity of the pills exchanged.



A test of another kind, with a second subject, renders the mistake more

striking. I substitute, in the place of the lawful bag which I have

removed, the work of the Silky Epeira. The colour and softness of the

material are the same in both cases; but the shape is quite different.

The stolen object is a globe; the object presented in exchange is an

elliptical conoid studded with angular projections along the edge of the

base. The Spider takes no account of this dissimilarity. She promptly

glues the queer bag to her spinnerets and is as pleased as though she

were in possession of her real pill. My experimental villainies have no

other consequences beyond an ephemeral carting. When hatching-time

arrives, early in the case of the Lycosa, late in that of the Epeira, the

gulled Spider abandons the strange bag and pays it no further attention.



Let us penetrate yet deeper into the wallet-bearer's stupidity. After

depriving the Lycosa of her eggs, I throw her a ball of cork, roughly

polished with a file and of the same size as the stolen pill. She

accepts the corky substance, so different from the silk purse, without

the least demur. One would have thought that she would recognize her

mistake with those eight eyes of hers, which gleam like precious stones.

The silly creature pays no attention. Lovingly she embraces the cork

ball, fondles it with her palpi, fastens it to her spinnerets and

thenceforth drags it after her as though she were dragging her own bag.



Let us give another the choice between the imitation and the real. The

rightful pill and the cork ball are placed together on the floor of the

jar. Will the Spider be able to know the one that belongs to her? The

fool is incapable of doing so. She makes a wild rush and seizes

haphazard at one time her property, at another my sham product. Whatever

is first touched becomes a good capture and is forthwith hung up.



If I increase the number of cork balls, if I put in four or five of them,

with the real pill among them, it is seldom that the Lycosa recovers her

own property. Attempts at enquiry, attempts at selection there are none.

Whatever she snaps up at random she sticks to, be it good or bad. As

there are more of the sham pills of cork, these are the most often seized

by the Spider.



This obtuseness baffles me. Can the animal be deceived by the soft

contact of the cork? I replace the cork balls by pellets of cotton or

paper, kept in their round shape with a few bands of thread. Both are

very readily accepted instead of the real bag that has been removed.



Can the illusion be due to the colouring, which is light in the cork and

not unlike the tint of the silk globe when soiled with a little earth,

while it is white in the paper and the cotton, when it is identical with

that of the original pill? I give the Lycosa, in exchange for her work,

a pellet of silk thread, chosen of a fine red, the brightest of all

colours. The uncommon pill is as readily accepted and as jealously

guarded as the others.



We will leave the wallet-bearer alone; we know all that we want to know

about her poverty of intellect. Let us wait for the hatching, which

takes place in the first fortnight in September. As they come out of the

pill, the youngsters, to the number of about a couple of hundred, clamber

on the Spider's back and there sit motionless, jammed close together,

forming a sort of bark of mingled legs and paunches. The mother is

unrecognizable under this live mantilla. When the hatching is over, the

wallet is loosened from the spinnerets and cast aside as a worthless rag.



The little ones are very good: none stirs none tries to get more room for

himself at his neighbours' expense. What are they doing there, so

quietly? They allow themselves to be carted about, like the young of the

Opossum. Whether she sit in long meditation at the bottom of her den, or

come to the orifice, in mild weather, to bask in the sun, the Lycosa

never throws off her great-coat of swarming youngsters until the fine

season comes.



If, in the middle of winter, in January or February, I happen, out in the

fields, to ransack the Spider's dwelling, after the rain, snow and frost

have battered it and, as a rule, dismantled the bastion at the entrance,

I always find her at home, still full of vigour, still carrying her

family. This vehicular upbringing lasts five or six months at least,

without interruption. The celebrated American carrier, the Opossum, who

emancipates her offspring after a few weeks' carting, cuts a poor figure

beside the Lycosa.



What do the little ones eat, on the maternal spine? Nothing, so far as I

know. I do not see them grow larger. I find them, at the tardy period

of their emancipation, just as they were when they left the bag.



During the bad season, the mother herself is extremely abstemious. At

long intervals, she accepts, in my jars, a belated Locust, whom I have

captured, for her benefit, in the sunnier nooks. In order to keep

herself in condition, as when she is dug up in the course of my winter

excavations, she must therefore sometimes break her fast and come out in

search of prey, without, of course, discarding her live mantilla.



The expedition has its dangers. The youngsters may be brushed off by a

blade of grass. What becomes of them when they have a fall? Does the

mother give them a thought? Does she come to their assistance and help

them to regain their place on her back? Not at all. The affection of a

Spider's heart, divided among some hundreds, can spare but a very feeble

portion to each. The Lycosa hardly troubles, whether one youngster fall

from his place, or six, or all of them. She waits impassively for the

victims of the mishap to get out of their own difficulty, which they do,

for that matter, and very nimbly.



I sweep the whole family from the back of one of my boarders with a hair-

pencil. Not a sign of emotion, not an attempt at search on the part of

the denuded one. After trotting about a little on the sand, the

dislodged youngsters find, these here, those there, one or other of the

mother's legs, spread wide in a circle. By means of these

climbing-poles, they swarm to the top and soon the dorsal group resumes

its original form. Not one of the lot is missing. The Lycosa's sons

know their trade as acrobats to perfection: the mother need not trouble

her head about their fall.



With a sweep of the pencil, I make the family of one Spider fall around

another laden with her own family. The dislodged ones nimbly scramble up

the legs and climb on the back of their new mother, who kindly allows

them to behave as though they belonged to her. There is no room on the

abdomen, the regulation resting-place, which is already occupied by the

real sons. The invaders thereupon encamp on the front part, beset the

thorax and change the carrier into a horrible pin-cushion that no longer

bears the least resemblance to a Spider form. Meanwhile, the sufferer

raises no sort of protest against this access of family. She placidly

accepts them all and walks them all about.



The youngsters, on their side, are unable to distinguish between what is

permitted and forbidden. Remarkable acrobats that they are, they climb

on the first Spider that comes along, even when of a different species,

provided that she be of a fair size. I place them in the presence of a

big Epeira marked with a white cross on a pale-orange ground (_Epeira

pallida_, OLIV.). The little ones, as soon as they are dislodged from

the back of the Lycosa their mother, clamber up the stranger without

hesitation.



Intolerant of these familiarities, the Spider shakes the leg encroached

upon and flings the intruders to a distance. The assault is doggedly

resumed, to such good purpose that a dozen succeed in hoisting themselves

to the top. The Epeira, who is not accustomed to the tickling of such a

load, turns over on her back and rolls on the ground in the manner of a

donkey when his hide is itching. Some are lamed, some are even crushed.

This does not deter the others, who repeat the escalade as soon as the

Epeira is on her legs again. Then come more somersaults, more rollings

on the back, until the giddy swarm are all discomfited and leave the

Spider in peace.