In the fields around, traversed, in these days, with a tired step, but still vigilantly explored, I find nothing so often as the Labyrinth Spider (Agelena labyrinthica, CLERCK.).  Not a hedge but shelters a few at its foot, amidst grass, in quiet, sunny nooks.  In the open country and especially in hilly places laid bare by the wood-man’s axe, the favourite sites are tufts of bracken, rock-rose, lavender, everlasting and rosemary cropped close by the teeth of the flocks.  This is where I resort, as the isolation and kindliness of the supports lend themselves to proceedings which might not be tolerated by the unfriendly hedge.

Several times a week, in July, I go to study my Spiders on the spot, at an early hour, before the sun beats fiercely on one’s neck.  The children accompany me, each provided with an orange wherewith to slake the thirst that will not be slow in coming.  They lend me their good eyes and supple limbs.  The expedition promises to be fruitful.

We soon discover high silk buildings, betrayed at a distance by the glittering threads which the dawn has converted into dewy rosaries.  The children are wonderstruck at those glorious chandeliers, so much so that they forget their oranges for a moment.  Nor am I, on my part, indifferent.  A splendid spectacle indeed is that of our Spider’s labyrinth, heavy with the tears of the night and lit up by the first rays of the sun.  Accompanied as it is by the Thrushes’ symphony, this alone is worth getting up for.

Half an hour’s heat; and the magic jewels disappear with the dew.  Now is the moment to inspect the webs.  Here is one spreading its sheet over a large cluster of rock-roses; it is the size of a handkerchief.  A profusion of guy-ropes, attached to any chance projection, moor it to the brushwood.  There is not a twig but supplies a contact-point.  Entwined on every side, surrounded and surmounted, the bush disappears from view, veiled in white muslin.

The web is flat at the edges, as far as the unevenness of the support permits, and gradually hollows into a crater, not unlike the bell of a hunting-horn.  The central portion is a cone-shaped gulf, a funnel whose neck, narrowing by degrees, dives perpendicularly into the leafy thicket to a depth of eight or nine inches.

At the entrance to the tube, in the gloom of that murderous alley, sits the Spider, who looks at us and betrays no great excitement at our presence.  She is grey, modestly adorned on the thorax with two black ribbons and on the abdomen with two stripes in which white specks alternate with brown.  At the tip of the belly, two small, mobile appendages form a sort of tail, a rather curious feature in a Spider.

The crater-shaped web is not of the same structure throughout.  At the borders, it is a gossamer weft of sparse threads; nearer the centre, the texture becomes first fine muslin and then satin; lower still, on the narrower part of the opening, it is a network of roughly lozenged meshes.  Lastly, the neck of the funnel, the usual resting-place, is formed of solid silk.