THE LABYRINTH SPIDER
While the Garden Spiders are incomparable weavers, many other Spiders
have even more ingenious devices for catching game. Some of them are
real celebrities, who are mentioned in all the books.
Certain Bird Spiders, or American Tarantulas, live in a burrow like
the Tarantula I have been telling you about, but their burrow is more
perfect than hers. My Tarantula surrounds the mouth of her hole with a
simple curb, a mere collection of tiny pebbles, sticks, and silk; the
American ones fix a movable floor to theirs, a round shutter with a
hinge, a groove, and a set of bolts. When one of these Tarantulas comes
home, the lid drops into the groove and fits so exactly one cannot tell
where it joins. If any one from outside tries to raise the trap-door,
the Spider pushes the bolt,—that is to say, plants her claws into
certain holes on the opposite side to the hinge,—props herself against
the wall, and holds the door firmly.
Another, the Water Spider, builds herself an elegant silken
diving-bell, in which she stores air. She waits in it for the coming
of game and keeps cool meanwhile. On scorching hot days, hers must
be a real palace of luxury, such as men have sometimes ventured to
build under water, with mighty blocks of stone and marble. Tiberius,
the wicked Roman Emperor, had such a submarine palace; but his is
only a hateful memory, whereas the Water Spider’s dainty tower still
flourishes.
If I had had the chance to observe these Spiders, I should gladly add
a few unpublished facts to their life-history; but I must give up
the idea. The Water Spider is not found in my district. The American
Tarantula, the expert in hinged doors, I saw once only, by the side of
a path. I was occupied with something else, and did not give it more
than a passing glance. I have never seen it again.
But it is not only the uncommon insects that are worth attention.
The common ones, if carefully observed, can tell us things just as
important. I am interested in the Labyrinth Spider, which I find
oftener than any other in the fields. Several times a week, in July,
I go to study my Spiders on the spot, early in the morning, before
the sun beats fiercely on one’s neck. The children come with me, each
provided with an orange in case they get thirsty.
We soon discover high silk buildings, the threads beaded with dew and
glittering in the sun. The children are wonderstruck at those glorious
chandeliers, so that they even forget their oranges for a moment. I am
not indifferent to them, either. Our Spider’s labyrinth is a splendid
spectacle. That and the concert of the Thrushes are worth getting up
for.
Half an hour’s heat, and the magic jewels disappear with the dew. Now
is the time to look at the webs. Here is one spreading its sheet over
a large cluster of rock-roses; it is the size of a handkerchief. Many
guy-ropes moor it to the brushwood. It covers the bush like a piece of
white muslin.
The web is flat at the edges and gradually hollows into a crater, not
unlike the bell of a hunting-horn. At the center is a funnel whose
neck, narrowing by degrees, is eight or nine inches deep and leads back
into the leafy thicket.
At the entrance to the tube sits the Spider, who looks at us and shows
no great excitement at our presence. She is gray, modestly adorned on
the thorax with two black ribbons and on the abdomen with two stripes
in which white specks alternate with brown. She has a sort of double
tail at the end of her body, a rather curious feature in a Spider.
I expected to find, at the bottom of the Spider’s funnel, a wadded cell
where she might rest in her hours of leisure. On the contrary, there is
only a sort of door, which stands always ajar so that the Spider may
escape at any time through the grass and gain the open.
Above, in the Spider’s web, there is a forest of ropes. It might be the
rigging of a ship disabled by a storm. They run from every twig of the
supporting boughs, they are fastened to the tip of every branch. There
are long ropes and short ropes, upright and slanting, straight and
bent, taut and slack, all criss-cross and a-tangle, to the height of
three feet or so. The whole makes a chaos of netting, a real labyrinth
which none but the very strongest insects can break through.
There is nothing like the sticky snare of the Garden Spiders here. The
threads are not sticky, but they are very bewildering. See this small
Locust who has lighted on the rigging. He is unable to get a steady
foothold on that shaky support; he flounders about; and the more he
struggles, the more he is entangled. The Spider, looking at him from
her funnel, lets him have his way. She does not run up the ropes; she
waits until the desperate prisoner in his struggles falls on the main
part of the web.
Then she comes, flings herself upon her prey, and slowly drains his
blood. The Locust is lifeless at the first bite; the Spider’s poison
has settled him.
When laying-time is at hand, the Spider changes her residence; she
leaves her web, which is still in excellent condition; she does not
come back to it. The time has come to make the nest. But where? The
Spider knows well; I am in the dark. I spend whole mornings ransacking
the bushes, until at last I learn the secret. The nest is some distance
away from the web, in a low, thick cluster of bushes; it is a clumsy
bundle of dead leaves, roughly drawn together with silk threads. Under
this rude covering is a pouch of fine texture containing the egg-casket.
[Illustration]
I am disappointed in the appearance of this Spider’s nest, until I
remember that she probably cannot do better in the places where she
builds. In the midst of a dense thicket, among a tangle of dead leaves
and twigs, there is no room for an elegant piece of work. By way of
experiment, I carry half a dozen Labyrinth Spiders into my laboratory
near the laying-time, place them in large wire-gauze cages, standing
in earthen pans filled with sand, with a sprig of thyme planted in the
center to give a support for each nest. Now they will show what they
can do.
The experiment works perfectly. By the end of August I have six nests,
magnificent in shape and of a dazzling whiteness. The Spiders have
had elbow-room, and they have done their best. The nests are ovals
of exquisite white muslin, nearly as large as a Hen’s egg. They are
open at either end. The front-entrance broadens into a gallery; the
back-entrance tapers into a funnel-neck. It is somewhat the same
construction as that of the Labyrinth web. Even the labyrinth is
repeated, for in front of the bell-shaped mouth is a tangle of threads.
The Spider has her pattern by heart, and uses it on all occasions.
This palace of silk is a guard-house. Behind the soft, milky,
partly transparent wall glimmers the egg-casket, its shape vaguely
suggesting the star of some order of knighthood. It is a large pocket,
of a splendid dead-white, with pillars on every side which keep it
motionless in the center of the nest. There are about ten of these
pillars; they are slender in the middle and wider at both ends. They
form corridors around the central room. The mother walks gravely to and
fro under the arches of these corridors, which are like the cloisters
of a nunnery; she stops first here, then there; she listens to all
that happens inside the satin wrapper of her egg-wallet. I would not
disturb her for anything; but I find, from nests I have picked up in
the fields, that the purse contains about a hundred eggs, very pale
amber-yellow beads.
When I remove the outer white-satin wall, I come upon a kernel of
earthy matter, grains of sand mixed with the silk. However did they
get there? Did they soak through the rain-water? No, the wrapper is
spotless white outside. They have been put there by the mother herself.
She has built around her eggs, to protect them from parasites, a wall
composed of a great deal of sand and a little silk.
Inside this is still another silken wrapper, and then come the little
Spiders, already hatched out and moving about in their nursery.
But, to go back—why does the mother leave her fine web when laying-time
comes, and make her nest so far away? She has her reason, you may
depend upon it. Her large net, like a sheet, with the labyrinth
stretched above, is very conspicuous; parasites will not fail to come
running at this signal, showing up against the green; if her nest is
near, they will certainly find it; and a strange grub, feasting on a
hundred new-laid eggs, will ruin her home. So the wise Labyrinth Spider
shifts her quarters, and goes off at night to explore the neighborhood
for a less dangerous retreat for her coming family. The low brambles
dragging along the ground, keeping their leaves through the winter, and
catching the dead leaves from the oaks hard by, or rosemary tufts, low
and bushy, suit her perfectly. In such spots I usually find her nest.
Many Spiders leave their nests after they have laid the eggs, but
the Labyrinth, like the Crab-spider, remains to watch over hers. She
does not become thin and wither away, like the Crab-spider. She keeps
her appetite, she is on the lookout for Locusts; and so she builds a
hunting-box, a tangle of threads, on the outside of her nest.
When she is not hunting, as we have seen, she walks the corridors
around her eggs, she listens to find out if all is well. If I shake the
nest at any point with a straw, she quickly runs up to inquire what is
happening. Probably she keeps off parasites in this way.
The Spider’s appetite for Locusts shows that she must have more to do.
Insects, unlike some human beings, eat only that they may work. When I
watch her, I find out what this work is. For nearly another month, I
see her adding layer upon layer to the walls of her nest. These were
at first semi-transparent; they become thick and opaque. This is why
the Spider eats, so that she may fill her silk-glands and make a thick
wrapper for her nest.
About the middle of September the little Spiders come out of their
eggs, but they do not leave their house, where they are to spend the
winter packed in soft wadding. The mother continues to watch and spin,
but she grows less active from day to day. She eats fewer Locusts; she
sometimes scorns those whom I myself entangle in her trap. But for four
or five months longer she keeps on making her inspection-rounds of her
egg-casket, happy at hearing the new-born Spiders swarming inside.
At last, when October ends, she clutches her children’s nursery and
dies. She has done all that a mother’s devotion can do; the special
Providence that watches over tiny animals will do the rest. When spring
comes, the youngsters will come out of their snug homes and scatter
all over the neighborhood on their floating threads, like the little
Crab-spiders you have read about.
[Illustration]