Turning her back on the game, the Epeira works all her spinnerets, pierced like the rose of a watering-pot, at one and the same time.  The silky spray is gathered by the hind-legs, which are longer than the others and open into a wide arc to allow the stream to spread.  Thanks to this artifice, the Epeira this time obtains not a thread, but an iridescent sheet, a sort of clouded fan wherein the component threads are kept almost separate.  The two hind-legs fling this shroud gradually, by rapid alternate armfuls, while, at the same time, they turn the prey over and over, swathing it completely.

The ancient retiarius, when pitted against a powerful wild beast, appeared in the arena with a rope-net folded over his left shoulder.  The animal made its spring.  The man, with a sudden movement of his right arm, cast the net after the manner of the fishermen; he covered the beast and tangled it in the meshes.  A thrust of the trident gave the quietus to the vanquished foe.

The Epeira acts in like fashion, with this advantage, that she is able to renew her armful of fetters.  Should the first not suffice, a second instantly follows and another and yet another, until the reserves of silk become exhausted.

When all movement ceases under the snowy winding-sheet, the Spider goes up to her bound prisoner.  She has a better weapon than the bestiarius’ trident:  she has her poison-fangs.  She gnaws at the Locust, without undue persistence, and then withdraws, leaving the torpid patient to pine away.

Soon she comes back to her motionless head of game:  she sucks it, drains it, repeatedly changing her point of attack.  At last, the clean-bled remains are flung out of the net and the Spider returns to her ambush in the centre of the web.

What the Epeira sucks is not a corpse, but a numbed body.  If I remove the Locust immediately after he has been bitten and release him from the silken sheath, the patient recovers his strength to such an extent that he seems, at first, to have suffered no injury.  The Spider, therefore, does not kill her capture before sucking its juices; she is content to deprive it of the power of motion by producing a state of torpor.  Perhaps this kindlier bite gives her greater facility in working her pump.  The humours, if stagnant, in a corpse, would not respond so readily to the action of the sucker; they are more easily extracted from a live body, in which they move about.

The Epeira, therefore, being a drinker of blood, moderates the virulence of her sting, even with victims of appalling size, so sure is she of her retiarian art.  The long-legged Tryxalis, {17} the corpulent Grey Locust, the largest of our Grasshoppers are accepted without hesitation and sucked dry as soon as numbed.  Those giants, capable of making a hole in the net and passing through it in their impetuous onrush, can be but rarely caught.  I myself place them on the web.  The Spider does the rest.  Lavishing her silky spray, she swathes them and then sucks the body at her ease.  With an increased expenditure of the spinnerets, the very biggest game is mastered as successfully as the everyday prey.