Not at all:  the bag is woven around nothing, as accurate in shape, as finished in structure as under normal conditions.  The absurd perseverance displayed by certain Bees, whose egg and provisions I used to remove, {20} is here repeated without the slightest interference from me.  My victims used scrupulously to seal up their empty cells.  In the same way, the Epeira puts the eiderdown quilting and the taffeta wrapper round a capsule that contains nothing.

Another, distracted from her work by some startling vibration, leaves her nest at the moment when the layer of red-brown wadding is being completed.  She flees to the dome, at a few inches above her unfinished work, and spends upon a shapeless mattress, of no use whatever, all the silk with which she would have woven the outer wrapper if nothing had come to disturb her.

Poor fool!  You upholster the wires of your cage with swan’s-down and you leave the eggs imperfectly protected.  The absence of the work already executed and the hardness of the metal do not warn you that you are now engaged upon a senseless task.  You remind me of the Pelopaeus, {21} who used to coat with mud the place on the wall whence her nest had been removed.  You speak to me, in your own fashion, of a strange psychology which is able to reconcile the wonders of a master craftsmanship with aberrations due to unfathomable stupidity.

Let us compare the work of the Banded Epeira with that of the Penduline Titmouse, the cleverest of our small birds in the art of nest-building.  This Tit haunts the osier-beds of the lower reaches of the Rhone.  Rocking gently in the river breeze, his nest sways pendent over the peaceful backwaters, at some distance from the too-impetuous current.  It hangs from the drooping end of the branch of a poplar, an old willow or an alder, all of them tall trees, favouring the banks of streams.

It consists of a cotton bag, closed all round, save for a small opening at the side, just sufficient to allow of the mother’s passage.  In shape, it resembles the body of an alembic, a chemist’s retort with a short lateral neck, or, better still, the foot of a stocking, with the edges brought together, but for a little round hole left at one side.  The outward appearances increase the likeness:  one can almost see the traces of a knitting-needle working with coarse stitches.  That is why, struck by this shape, the Provencal peasant, in his expressive language, calls the Penduline lou Debassaire, the Stocking-knitter.

The early-ripening seedlets of the widows and poplars furnish the materials for the work.  There breaks from them, in May, a sort of vernal snow, a fine down, which the eddies of the air heap in the crevices of the ground.  It is a cotton similar to that of our manufactures, but of very short staple.  It comes from an inexhaustible warehouse:  the tree is bountiful; and the wind from the osier-beds gathers the tiny flocks as they pour from the seeds.  They are easy to pick up.