In bearing and colouring, Epeira fasciata is the handsomest of the Spiders of the South.  On her fat belly, a mighty silk-warehouse nearly as large as a hazel-nut, are alternate yellow, black and silver sashes, to which she owes her epithet of Banded.  Around that portly abdomen, the eight long legs, with their dark- and pale-brown rings, radiate like spokes.

Any small prey suits her; and, as long as she can find supports for her web, she settles wherever the Locust hops, wherever the Fly hovers, wherever the Dragon-fly dances or the Butterfly flits.  As a rule, because of the greater abundance of game, she spreads her toils across some brooklet, from bank to bank among the rushes.  She also stretches them, but not assiduously, in the thickets of evergreen oak, on the slopes with the scrubby greenswards, dear to the Grasshoppers.

Her hunting-weapon is a large upright web, whose outer boundary, which varies according to the disposition of the ground, is fastened to the neighbouring branches by a number of moorings.  The structure is that adopted by the other weaving Spiders.  Straight threads radiate at equal intervals from a central point.  Over this framework runs a continuous spiral thread, forming chords, or cross-bars, from the centre to the circumference.  It is magnificently large and magnificently symmetrical.

In the lower part of the web, starting from the centre, a wide opaque ribbon descends zigzag-wise across the radii.  This is the Epeira’s trade-mark, the flourish of an artist initialling his creation. ’Fecit So-and-so,’ she seems to say, when giving the last throw of the shuttle to her handiwork.

That the Spider feels satisfied when, after passing and repassing from spoke to spoke, she finishes her spiral, is beyond a doubt:  the work achieved ensures her food for a few days to come.  But, in this particular case, the vanity of the spinstress has naught to say to the matter:  the strong silk zigzag is added to impart greater firmness to the web.

Increased resistance is not superfluous, for the net is sometimes exposed to severe tests.  The Epeira cannot pick and choose her prizes.  Seated motionless in the centre of her web, her eight legs wide-spread to feel the shaking of the network in any direction, she waits for what luck will bring her:  now some giddy weakling unable to control its flight, anon some powerful prey rushing headlong with a reckless bound.

The Locust in particular, the fiery Locust, who releases the spring of his long shanks at random, often falls into the trap.  One imagines that his strength ought to frighten the Spider; the kick of his spurred levers should enable him to make a hole, then and there, in the web and to get away.  But not at all.  If he does not free himself at the first effort, the Locust is lost.