Towards the end of summer, all the householders, old or young, whether in captivity on the window-sill or at liberty in the paths of the enclosure, supply me daily with the following improving sight.  In the morning, as soon as the sun is hot and beats upon their burrow, the anchorites come up from the bottom with their bag and station themselves at the opening.  Long siestas on the threshold in the sun are the order of the day throughout the fine season; but, at the present time, the position adopted is a different one.  Formerly, the Lycosa came out into the sun for her own sake.  Leaning on the parapet, she had the front half of her body outside the pit and the hinder half inside.

The eyes took their fill of light; the belly remained in the dark.  When carrying her egg-bag, the Spider reverses the posture:  the front is in the pit, the rear outside.  With her hind-legs she holds the white pill bulging with germs lifted above the entrance; gently she turns and returns it, so as to present every side to the life-giving rays.  And this goes on for half the day, so long as the temperature is high; and it is repeated daily, with exquisite patience, during three or four weeks.  To hatch its eggs, the bird covers them with the quilt of its breast; it strains them to the furnace of its heart.  The Lycosa turns hers in front of the hearth of hearths, she gives them the sun as an incubator.

In the early days of September, the young ones, who have been some time hatched, are ready to come out.  The pill rips open along the middle fold.  We read of the origin of this fold in an earlier chapter. {24} Does the mother, feeling the brood quicken inside the satin wrapper, herself break open the vessel at the opportune moment?  It seems probable.  On the other hand, there may be a spontaneous bursting, such as we shall see later in the Banded Epeira’s balloon, a tough wallet which opens a breach of its own accord, long after the mother has ceased to exist.

The whole family emerges from the bag straightway.  Then and there, the youngsters climb to the mother’s back.  As for the empty bag, now a worthless shred, it is flung out of the burrow; the Lycosa does not give it a further thought.  Huddled together, sometimes in two or three layers, according to their number, the little ones cover the whole back of the mother, who, for seven or eight months to come, will carry her family night and day.  Nowhere can we hope to see a more edifying domestic picture than that of the Lycosa clothed in her young.

From time to time, I meet a little band of gipsies passing along the high-road on their way to some neighbouring fair.  The new-born babe mewls on the mother’s breast, in a hammock formed out of a kerchief.  The last-weaned is carried pick-a-back; a third toddles clinging to its mother’s skirts; others follow closely, the biggest in the rear, ferreting in the blackberry-laden hedgerows.  It is a magnificent spectacle of happy-go-lucky fruitfulness.  They go their way, penniless and rejoicing.  The sun is hot and the earth is fertile.