THE TARANTULA
The Spider has a bad name: most of us think her a horrid animal,
and hasten to crush her under our feet. Nevertheless, any one who
observes her knows that she is a hard worker, a talented weaver, a
wily huntress, and very interesting in other ways. Yes, the Spider is
well worth studying, apart from any scientific reasons; but she is
said to be poisonous, and that is her crime and the main reason why we
hate her. She _is_ poisonous, in a way, if by that we understand that
the animal is armed with two fangs which cause the immediate death of
the little victims that she catches; but there is a great difference
between killing a Midge and harming a Man. However quickly the Spider’s
poison kills insects, it is not as a rule serious for us and causes
less trouble than a gnat-bite. That, at least, is what we can safely
say about the great majority of Spiders.
Nevertheless, a few are to be feared. The Italians say that the
Tarantula produces convulsions and frenzied dances in the person stung
by her. Music is the only cure for this, and they tell us some tunes
are better than others. The tarantella, a lively dance, probably owes
its name to this idea of the Italian peasants. The story makes us feel
like laughing, but, after all, the bite of the Tarantula may possibly
bring on some nervous trouble which music will relieve; and possibly a
very energetic dance makes the patient break out into a perspiration
and so get rid of the poison.
The most powerful Spider in my neighborhood, the Black-bellied
Tarantula, will presently show us what her poison can do. But first I
will introduce her to you in her home, and tell you about her hunting.
This Tarantula is dressed in black velvet on the lower surface, with
brown stripes on the abdomen and gray and white rings around the legs.
Her favorite dwelling-place is the dry, pebbly ground, covered with
sun-scorched thyme. In my plot of waste ground, there are quite twenty
of these Spiders’ burrows. I hardly ever pass by one of these haunts
without giving a glance down the pit where gleam, like diamonds, the
four great eyes, the four telescopes of the hermit. The four other
eyes, which are much smaller, are not visible at that depth.
The Tarantula’s dwellings are pits about a foot deep, dug by herself
with her fangs, going straight down at first and then bent elbow-wise.
They are about an inch wide. On the edge of the hole stands a curb,
formed of straw, bits and scraps of all sorts, and even small pebbles,
the size of a hazel-nut. The whole is kept in place and cemented with
the Spider’s silk. Sometimes this curb, or little tower, is an inch
high; sometimes it is a mere rim.
I wished to catch some of these Spiders, so I waved a spikelet of
grass at the entrance of the burrow to imitate the humming of a Bee. I
expected that the Tarantula would rush out, thinking she heard a prey.
My scheme did not succeed. The Tarantula, indeed, came a little way up
her tube to find out the meaning of the sounds at her door; but she
soon scented a trap; she remained motionless at mid-height and would
not come any farther.
I found that the best method to secure the wily Tarantula was to
procure a supply of live Bumble-bees. I put one into a little bottle
with a mouth just wide enough to cover the opening of the burrow; and
I turned the apparatus thus baited over the opening. The powerful Bee
at first fluttered and hummed about her glass prison; then, seeing a
burrow like that made by her own family, she went into it without much
hesitation. She was very foolish: while she went down, the Spider came
up; and the meeting took place in the perpendicular passage. For a
few moments, I heard a sort of death-song: it was the humming of the
poor Bumble-bee. This was followed by a long silence. I removed the
bottle and explored the pit with a pair of pincers. I brought out the
Bumble-bee, motionless, dead. A terrible tragedy must have happened.
The Spider followed, refusing to let go so rich a booty. Game and
huntress were brought outside the hole, which I stopped up with a
pebble. Outside her own house the Tarantula is timid and hardly able to
run away. To push her with a straw into a paper bag was the work of a
second. Soon I had a colony of Tarantulas in my laboratory.
[Illustration]
I did not give the Tarantula the Bee merely in order to capture her. I
wished to know also her manner of hunting. I knew that she is one of
those insects who live from day to day on what they kill. She does not
store up preserved food for her children, like the Beetles; she is not
a “paralyzer,” like the Wasps you have read about, who cleverly spare
their game so as to leave it a glimmer of life and keep it fresh for
weeks at a time; she is a killer, who makes a meal off her capture on
the spot. I wished to find out how she kills them so quickly.
She does not go in for peaceable game. The big Grasshopper, with the
powerful jaws, the Bee and other wearers of poisoned daggers must
fall into her hole from time to time, and the duel she fights with
them is nearly equal as far as weapons go. For the poisonous fangs of
the Spider the Wasp has her poisoned dagger or sting. Which of the
two bandits shall have the best of it? The Tarantula has no second
means of defense, no cord to bind her victim, as the Garden Spiders
have. These cover the captives with their silk, making all resistance
impossible. The Tarantula has a riskier job. She has only her courage
and her fangs, and she must leap upon her dangerous prey and kill it
quickly. She must know exactly where to strike, for, strong though her
poison is, I cannot believe it would kill the prey instantly at any
point where she happens to bite. She must bite in some spot of vital
importance.
[Illustration]
A FIGHT WITH A CARPENTER-BEE
Instead of with the Bumble-bee, who enters the Spider’s burrow, I wish
to make the Tarantula fight with some other insect, who will stay above
ground. For this purpose I take one of the largest and most powerful
Bees that I can find, the Carpenter-bee, clad in black velvet, with
wings of purple gauze. She is nearly an inch long; her sting is very
painful and produces a swelling that hurts for a long time. I know,
because I have been stung. Here indeed is a foe worthy of the Tarantula.
I catch several Carpenter-bees, place them one by one in bottles, and
choose a strong, bold Tarantula, one moreover who appears to be very
hungry. I put the bottle baited with a Carpenter-bee upside down over
her door. The Bee buzzes gravely in her glass bell; the Spider comes
up from the recesses of her cave; she is on the threshold, but inside;
she looks; she waits. I also wait. The quarters, the half-hours pass;
nothing happens. The Spider goes down again: she probably thought the
attempt too dangerous. I try in this way three more Tarantulas, but
cannot make them leave their lairs.
At last I have better success. A Spider suddenly rushes from her
hole: she is unusually warlike, doubtless because she is very hungry.
She attacks the Bee in the bottle, and the combat lasts for but the
twinkling of an eye. The sturdy Carpenter-bee is dead. Where did the
murderess strike her? Right in the nape of the neck; her fangs are
still there. She has the knowledge which I suspected: she has bitten
the only point she could bite to produce sudden death. She has struck
the center of the victim’s nervous system.
I make more experiments and find that it is only once in a while that
the Tarantula will come out to fight the Carpenter-bee, but each time
that she does so she kills it in the same way. The reason of the
Tarantula’s hesitation is plain. An insect of this kind cannot be
seized recklessly: the Tarantula who missed her strike by biting at
random would do so at the risk of her life. Stung in any other place,
the Bee might live for hours and manage to sting her foe with her
poisoned dagger. The Spider is well aware of this. In the safe shelter
of her threshold she watches for the right moment; she waits for the
big Bee to face her, when the neck is easily grabbed.
[Illustration]
THE TARANTULA’S POISON
The Tarantula’s poison is a pretty dangerous weapon, as we shall see.
I make a Tarantula bite the leg of a young, well-fledged Sparrow,
ready to leave the nest. A drop of blood flows; the wounded spot is
surrounded by a reddish circle, changing to purple. The bird almost
immediately loses the use of its leg, which drags, with the toes
doubled in; it hops upon the other leg. Aside from this, the patient
does not seem to trouble much about his hurt; his appetite is good.
My daughters feed him on Flies, bread-crumb, apricot-pulp. He is sure
to get well; he will recover his strength; the poor victim of the
curiosity of science will be restored to liberty. This is the wish and
intention of us all. Twelve hours later, we are still more hopeful;
the invalid takes nourishment readily; he clamors for it, if we keep
him waiting. Two days after, he refuses his food. Wrapping himself
stoically in his rumpled feathers, the Sparrow hunches into a ball, now
motionless, now twitching. My girls take him in the hollow of their
hands and warm him with their breath. The spasms become more frequent.
A gasp tells us that all is over. The bird is dead.
There is a certain coolness among us at the evening meal. I read silent
reproaches, because of my experiment, in the eyes of the home-circle;
I know they think me cruel. The death of the unfortunate Sparrow has
saddened the whole family. I myself feel remorseful: what I have found
out seems to me too dearly bought.
Nevertheless, I had the courage to try again with a Mole who was caught
stealing from our lettuce-beds. I put him in a cage and fed him on a
varied diet of insects—Beetles and Grasshoppers. He crunched them up
with a fine appetite. Twenty-four hours of this life convinced me that
the Mole was making the best of the bill of fare and taking kindly to
his captivity.
I made the Tarantula bite him at the tip of the snout. When put back in
his cage, the Mole kept on scratching his nose with his broad paws. The
thing seemed to burn, to itch. From now on, he ate less and less of the
store of insects: on the evening of the following day, he refused them
altogether. About thirty-six hours after being bitten, the Mole died
during the night, and certainly not from starvation, for there were
still many live insects in the cage.
The bite of my Tarantula is therefore dangerous to other animals than
insects: it is fatal to the Sparrow, it is fatal to the Mole. I did
not make any more experiments, but I should say that people had better
beware of the bite of this Spider. It is not to be trifled with.
Think, just for a moment, of the skill of the Spider, the
insect-killer, as contrasted with the skill of the Wasps, the
insect-paralyzers. These insect-killers, who live on their prey, strike
the game dead at once by stinging the nerve-centers of the neck; the
paralyzers, on the other hand, who wish to keep the food fresh for
their larvæ, destroy the power of movement by stinging the game in the
other nerve-centers, lower down. They do not acquire this knowledge,
they have it as soon as they are born. And they teach those of us who
think that there is something behind it all, that there is Some One who
has planned things for insects and men alike.
THE TARANTULA’S HUNTING
From the Tarantulas whom I have captured and placed in pans filled with
earth in my laboratory, I learn still more about their hunting. They
are really magnificent, these captives. With their great bodies inside
their burrows, their heads outside, their glassy eyes staring, their
legs gathered for a spring, for hours and hours they wait, motionless,
bathing luxuriously in the sun.
Should a titbit to her liking happen to pass, at once the watcher
darts from her tall tower, swift as an arrow from the bow. With a
dagger-thrust in the neck, she stabs the Locust, Dragon-fly, or other
prey; and she as quickly climbs her tower and retires with her capture.
The performance is a wonderful exhibition of skill and speed.
She very seldom misses the game, provided that it pass at a convenient
distance, within reach of her bound. But if it be farther away she
takes no notice of it. Scorning to go in pursuit, she allows it to roam
at will.
This proves that the Tarantula has great patience, for the burrow has
nothing that can serve to attract victims. At best, refuge provided by
the tower may, once in a long while, tempt some weary wayfaring insect
to use it as a resting-place. But, if the game does not come to-day,
it is sure to come to-morrow, the next day, or later, for there are
many Locusts hopping in the waste land, and they are not always able to
regulate their leaps. Some day or other, chance is bound to bring one
of them near the burrow. Then the Spider springs upon the victim from
the ramparts. Until then, she stoically watches and fasts. She will
dine when she can; but she will finally dine.
The Tarantula really does not suffer much from a long fast. She has an
accommodating stomach, which is satisfied to be gorged to-day and to
remain empty afterwards for goodness knows how long. When I had the
Spiders in my laboratory, I sometimes neglected to feed them for weeks
at a time, and they were none the worse for it. After they have fasted
a long time, they do not pine away, but are smitten with a wolf-like
hunger.
In her youth, before she has a burrow, the Tarantula earns her living
in another manner. Clad in gray like her elders, but without the
black-velvet apron which she receives on reaching the marriageable age,
she roams among the stubby grass. This is true hunting. When the right
kind of game heaves in sight, the Spider pursues it, drives it from
its shelters, follows it hot-foot. The fugitive gains the heights, and
makes as though to fly away. He has not the time. With an upward leap,
the Tarantula grabs him before he can rise.
I am charmed with the quick way in which my year-old Spider boarders
seize the Flies that I provide for them. In vain does the Fly take
refuge a couple of inches up, on some blade of grass. With a sudden
spring into the air, the Spider pounces on her prey. No Cat is quicker
in catching her Mouse.
But these are the feats of youth not handicapped by fatness. Later,
when the bag of eggs has to be trailed along, the Tarantula cannot
indulge in gymnastics. She then digs herself her hunting-lodge, and
sits in her watch-tower, on the lookout for game.
[Illustration]
THE TARANTULA’S BAG
You will be surprised to hear how devoted this terrible Tarantula is to
her family.
Early one morning in August, I found a Tarantula spinning on the ground
a silk network covering an extent about as large as the palm of one’s
hand. It was coarse and shapeless, but firmly fixed. This is the floor
on which the Spider means to work. It will protect her nest from the
sand.
On this floor she weaves a round mat, about the size of a fifty-cent
piece and made of superb white silk. She thickens the outer part of it,
until it becomes a sort of bowl, surrounded by a wide, flat edge. Upon
this bowl she lays her eggs. These she covers with silk. The result is
a pill set in the middle of a circular carpet.
With her legs she takes up and breaks off one by one the threads that
keep the round mat stretched on the coarse floor. At the same time, she
grips this sheet with her fangs, lifts it by degrees, tears it from
its base, and folds it over upon the globe of eggs. It is hard work.
The whole thing totters, the floor collapses, heavy with sand. The
Tarantula, by a movement of her legs, casts these soiled shreds aside.
She pulls with her fangs and sweeps with her broom-like legs, till she
has pulled away her bag of eggs.
It is like a white-silk pill, soft and sticky to the touch, as big
as an average cherry. If you look closely, you will notice, running
horizontally around the middle, a fold which a needle is able to raise
without breaking it. This is the edge of the circular mat, drawn over
the lower half of the bag. The upper half, through which the young
Tarantulas will go out, is less well protected: its only wrapper is the
silk spun over the eggs immediately after they were laid.
Inside, there is nothing but the eggs: no mattress, no soft eider down,
like that of the Banded Spider. This Tarantula has no need to guard her
eggs against the weather, for the hatching will take place long before
the cold weather comes.
The mother has been busy the whole morning over her bag. Now she is
tired. She embraces her dear pill and remains motionless. I shall see
her no more to-day. Next morning I find the Spider carrying her bag of
eggs slung behind her.
For three weeks and more the Tarantula trails the bag of eggs hanging
to her spinnerets. When she comes up from her shaft to lean upon
the curb and bask in the sun, when she suddenly retires underground
in the face of danger, and when she is roaming the country before
settling down, she never lets go her precious bag, though it is a
very inconvenient burden in walking, climbing or leaping. If, by some
accident, it become detached from the fastening to which it is hung,
she flings herself madly on her treasure and lovingly embraces it,
ready to bite the person who would take it from her. She restores the
pill to its place with a quick touch of her spinnerets, and strides
off, still threatening.
Towards the end of summer, every morning, as soon as the sun is hot,
the Tarantulas come up from the bottom of their burrows with their bags
and station themselves at the opening. Earlier in the season they have
taken long naps on the threshold in the sun in the middle of the day;
but now they ascend for a different reason. Before, the Tarantula came
out into the sun for her own sake. Leaning on the parapet, she had the
front half of her body outside the pit and the back half inside. Her
eyes took their fill of light; the body remained in the dark. When
carrying her egg-bag the Spider reverses her position: the front is
in the pit, the rear outside. With her hind-legs she holds the white
pill, bulging with germs, lifted above the entrance; gently she turns
and re-turns it, so as to present every side to the life-giving rays of
the sun. And this goes on for half the day, as long as the temperature
is high; and it is repeated daily, with exquisite patience, during
three or four weeks. To hatch its eggs, the bird covers them with the
quilt of its breast; it strains them to the furnace of its heart. The
Tarantula turns hers in front of the hearth of hearths: she gives them
the sun as an incubator.
[Illustration]
THE TARANTULA’S BABIES
In the early days of September, the young ones, who have been some time
hatched, are ready to come out. The pill rips open along the middle
fold. We have read of this fold. Does the mother, feeling the brood
quicken inside the satin wrapper, herself break open the vessel at the
right moment? It seems probable. On the other hand, it may burst of
itself, as does the Banded Spider’s balloon, a tough wallet which opens
a breach of its own accord, long after the mother has ceased to exist.
As they come out of the pill, the little Tarantulas, to the number of
about a couple of hundred, clamber on the mother Tarantula’s back and
there sit motionless, jammed close together, forming a sort of bark of
mingled legs and bodies. The mother cannot be recognized under this
live cloak. 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 neighbor’s 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 opening, in mild weather, to bask in the sun, the
Tarantula never throws off her greatcoat 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, destroyed the curb at
the entrance, I always find her at home, still full of vigor, still
carrying her family. This upbringing of her youngsters on her back
lasts five or six months at least, without interruption. The celebrated
American carrier, the Opossum, who lets her children go after a few
weeks’ carting, cuts a poor figure beside the Tarantula.
[Illustration: “Does she help them to regain their place on her back?”]
What do the little ones eat on their mother’s spine? Nothing, so far as
I know. I do not see them grow larger. I find them, when they finally
leave to shift for themselves, just as they were when they left the bag.
During the bad season, the mother herself eats very little. 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 she is 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
cloak of youngsters.
The expedition has its dangers. The little Spiders 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 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 Tarantula hardly troubles, whether one youngster fall from
his place, or six, or all of them. She waits quietly 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 mother. After trotting about a little on the sand, the
dislodged youngsters find, these here, those there, one or another
of the mother’s legs, spread wide in a circle. By means of these
climbing-poles they swarm to the top, and soon the group on the
mother’s back resumes its original form. Not one of the lot is missing.
The Tarantula’s sons know their trade as acrobats to perfection: the
mother need not trouble her head about their fall.
[Illustration]
A MEAL OF SUNSHINE
Does the Tarantula at least feed the youngsters who, for seven months,
swarm upon her back? Does she invite them to the party when she has
captured a prize? I thought so at first; and I gave special attention
to watching the mothers eat. Usually, the prey is devoured out of
sight, in the burrow; but sometimes a meal is taken on the threshold,
in the open air. Well, I see then that while the mother eats, the
youngsters do not budge from their camping ground on her back. Not one
quits its place or gives a sign of wishing to slip down and join in the
meal. Nor does the mother invite them to come and refresh themselves,
or put any left-over food aside for them. She feeds and the others look
on, or rather remain indifferent to what is happening. Their perfect
quiet during the Tarantula’s feast is a proof that they are not hungry.
Then what do they live upon, during their seven months’ upbringing on
the mother’s back? One thinks of their absorbing nourishment from their
mother’s skin. We must give up this notion. Never are they seen to put
their mouths to it. And the Tarantula, far from being exhausted and
shriveling, keeps perfectly well and plump; she even puts on flesh.
Once more, with what do the little ones keep up their strength? We
do not like to suggest that they are still living on the food they
received in the egg, especially when we consider that they must use the
energy drawn from this food to produce silk, a material of the highest
importance, of which a plentiful use will be made presently. There must
be other powers at play in the tiny animal’s machinery.
We could understand their not needing anything to eat if they did not
move; complete quiet is not life. But the young Spiders, although
usually quiet on their mother’s back, are at all times ready for
exercise and for agile swarming. When they fall from the mother’s
baby-carriage, they briskly pick themselves up, briskly scramble
up a leg and make their way to the top. It is a splendidly nimble
and spirited performance. Besides, once seated, they have to keep a
firm balance; they have to stretch and stiffen their little limbs in
order to hang on to their neighbors. As a matter of fact, there is no
absolute rest for them.
Now physiology teaches us that not a muscle works without using up
energy. The animal is like a machine; it must renew its body, which
wears out with movement, and it must have something to make heat, which
is turned into action. We can compare it with the locomotive-engine.
As the iron horse does its work, it gradually wears out its pistons,
its rods, its wheels, its boiler-tubes, all of which have to be made
good from time to time. The foundry-man and the blacksmith repair it,
supply it with new parts; it is as if they were giving it food to renew
itself. But, although it be brand-new, it cannot move until the stoker
shovels some coal into its inside and sets fire to it. This coal is
like energy-producing food; it makes the engine work.
Things are just the same with the animal. Since nothing is made from
nothing, the little new-born animal is made from the food there was
in the egg. This is tissue-forming food which increases the body, up
to a certain point, and renews it as it wears away. But it must have
heat-food, or energy-food, too. Then the animal will walk, run, jump,
swim, fly, or move in any one of a thousand manners.
To return to the young Spiders: they grow no larger until after they
leave their mother. At the age of seven months they are the same as at
birth. The egg supplied the food necessary for their tiny frames; and
they do not need more tissue-forming food as long as they do not grow.
This we can understand. But where do they get the energy-food that
makes them able to move about so actively?
Here is an idea. What is coal, the energy-food of the locomotive? It is
the fossil remains of trees which, ages ago, drank the sunlight with
their leaves. Coal is really stored-up sunlight and the locomotive,
devouring it, is devouring sunlight.
Beasts of flesh and blood act no otherwise. Whether they eat one
another or plants, they always live on the stimulant of the sun’s heat,
a heat stored in grass, fruit, seed, and those which feed on such. The
sun, the soul of the universe, is the supreme giver of energy.
Instead of being served up in food and being digested through the
stomach, could not this sun-energy enter the animal directly and charge
it with activity, just as the electric battery charges an accumulator
with power? Why not live on sun, seeing that, after all, we find
nothing but sun in the fruits which we eat?
The chemists say they are going to feed us some day on artificial
food-stuffs put up in drug-stores. Perhaps the laboratory and the
factory will take the place of the farm. Why should not physical
science do as well? It would leave to the chemist the preparation of
tissue-forming food; it would give us energy-food. With the help of
some ingenious apparatus, it would pump into us our daily supply of
sun-energy, to be later spent in movement, so that we could keep going
without eating at all. What a delightful world, where one would lunch
off a ray of sunshine!
Are we dreaming, or will something like this happen some day? It is
worth while surely for the scientists to think about it.
[Illustration]
THE FLIGHT OF THE BABY TARANTULAS
As the month of March comes to an end, the mother Tarantula is outside
her burrow, squatting on the parapet at the entrance. It is time for
the youngsters to leave her. She lets them do as they please, seeming
perfectly indifferent to what is happening.
The departure begins during glorious weather, in the hottest hours of
the morning. First these, then those, of the little ones, according
as they feel themselves soaked with sunshine, leave the mother in
batches, run about for a moment on the ground, and then quickly reach
the trellis-work of the cage in my laboratory, which they climb with
surprising quickness. They all make for the heights, though their
mother is accustomed to stay on the solid ground. There is an upright
ring at the top of the cage. The youngsters hurry to it. They hang out
threads across the opening; they stretch others from the ring to the
nearest points of the trellis-work. On these foot-bridges they perform
slack-rope exercises. The tiny legs open out from time to time as
though to reach the most distant points. I begin to realize that they
wish to go higher.
I top the trellis with a branch as high again. The little Spiders
hastily scramble up it, reach the tip of the topmost twigs and from
there send out threads that fasten themselves to every surrounding
object. These are suspension-bridges; and my beasties nimbly run along
them, incessantly passing to and fro. They seem to wish to climb still
higher.
I take a nine-foot reed, with tiny branches spreading right up to the
top, and place it above the cage. The little Tarantulas clamber to
the very summit. Here they send out longer threads, which are left to
float, and which again form bridges when their loose ends touch some
object. The rope-dancers embark upon them and form garlands which the
least breath of air swings daintily. One cannot see the threads at all
unless they come between the eyes and the sun; the Spiders look as if
they were dancing in the air.
Then, suddenly, shaken by the air-currents, the delicate mooring breaks
and flies through space. Behold the little Spiders fly off and away,
hanging to their threads! If the wind be favorable, they can land at
great distances.
The bands of little Spiders keep on leaving thus for a week or two,
if the weather is fine. On cloudy days, none dreams of going. The
travelers need the kisses of the sun, which give them energy and vigor.
At last, the whole family has disappeared, carried afar by its
flying-ropes. The mother is alone. The loss of her children hardly
seems to distress her. She goes on with her hunting with greater
energy, now that she is not hampered with her coat of little ones. She
will have other families, become a grandmother and a great-grandmother,
for the Tarantulas live several years.
In this species of Tarantula, as we have seen, a sudden instinct
arises in the young ones, to disappear, as promptly and forever, a few
hours later. This is the climbing-instinct, which is unknown to the
older Tarantula and soon forgotten by the young ones, who alight upon
the ground and wander there for many a long day before they begin to
build their burrows. Neither of them dreams of climbing to the top of
a grass-stalk. Yet here we have the young Tarantula, wishing to leave
her mother and to travel far away by the easiest and swiftest methods,
suddenly becoming an enthusiastic climber. We know her object. From on
high, finding a wide space beneath her, she sends a thread floating.
It is caught by the wind, and carries her hanging to it. We have our
aeroplanes; she too possesses her flying-machine. She makes it in her
hour of need, and when the journey is finished thinks no more about it.
[Illustration]