absorbed in unrelenting preoccupations. At length, during my last year at
Orange, the light dawned upon me. My garden was enclosed by an old wall,
blackened and ruined by time, where, in the chinks between the stones,
lived a population of Spiders, represented more particularly by Segestria
perfidia. This is the common Black Spider, or Cellar Spider. She is deep
black all over, excepting the mandibles, which are a splendid metallic
green. Her two poisoned daggers look like a product of the metal-worker's
art, like the finest bronze. In any mass of abandoned masonry there is not
a quiet corner, not a hole the size of one's finger, in which the Segestria
does not set up house. Her web is a widely flaring funnel, whose open end,
at most a span across, lies spread upon the surface of the wall, where it
is held in place by radiating threads. This conical surface is continued by
a tube which runs into a hole in the wall. At the end is the dining-room to
which the Spider retires to devour at her ease her captured prey.

With her two hind-legs stuck into the tube to obtain a purchase and the six
others spread around the orifice, the better to perceive on every side the
quiver which gives the signal of a capture, the Segestria waits motionless,
at the entrance of her funnel, for an insect to become entangled in the
snare. Large Flies, Drone-flies, dizzily grazing some thread of the snare
with their wings, are her usual victims. At the first flutter of the netted
Fly, the Spider runs or even leaps forward, but she is now secured by a
cord which escapes from the spinnerets and which has its end fastened to
the silken tube. This prevents her from falling as she darts along a
vertical surface. Bitten at the back of the head, the Drone-fly is dead in
a moment; and the Segestria carries him into her lair.

Thanks to this method and these hunting-appliances--an ambush at the bottom
of a silken whirlpool, radiating snares, a life-line which holds her from
behind and allows her to take a sudden rush without risking a fall--the