But how this picture pales before that of the Lycosa, that incomparable gipsy whose brats are numbered by the hundred!  And one and all of them, from September to April, without a moment’s respite, find room upon the patient creature’s back, where they are content to lead a tranquil life and to be carted about.

The little ones are very good; none moves, none seeks a quarrel with his neighbours.  Clinging together, they form a continuous drapery, a shaggy ulster under which the mother becomes unrecognizable.  Is it an animal, a fluff of wool, a cluster of small seeds fastened to one another?  ’Tis impossible to tell at the first glance.

The equilibrium of this living blanket is not so firm but that falls often occur, especially when the mother climbs from indoors and comes to the threshold to let the little ones take the sun.  The least brush against the gallery unseats a part of the family.  The mishap is not serious.  The Hen, fidgeting about her Chicks, looks for the strays, calls them, gathers them together.  The Lycosa knows not these maternal alarms.  Impassively, she leaves those who drop off to manage their own difficulty, which they do with wonderful quickness.  Commend me to those youngsters for getting up without whining, dusting themselves and resuming their seat in the saddle!  The unhorsed ones promptly find a leg of the mother, the usual climbing-pole; they swarm up it as fast as they can and recover their places on the bearer’s back.  The living bark of animals is reconstructed in the twinkling of an eye.

To speak here of mother-love were, I think, extravagant.  The Lycosa’s affection for her offspring hardly surpasses that of the plant, which is unacquainted with any tender feeling and nevertheless bestows the nicest and most delicate care upon its seeds.  The animal, in many cases, knows no other sense of motherhood.  What cares the Lycosa for her brood!  She accepts another’s as readily as her own; she is satisfied so long as her back is burdened with a swarming crowd, whether it issue from her ovaries or elsewhence.  There is no question here of real maternal affection.

I have described elsewhere the prowess of the Copris {25} watching over cells that are not her handiwork and do not contain her offspring.  With a zeal which even the additional labour laid upon her does not easily weary, she removes the mildew from the alien dung-balls, which far exceed the regular nests in number; she gently scrapes and polishes and repairs them; she listens to them attentively and enquires by ear into each nursling’s progress.  Her real collection could not receive greater care.  Her own family or another’s:  it is all one to her.

The Lycosa is equally indifferent.  I take a hair-pencil and sweep the living burden from one of my Spiders, making it fall close to another covered with her little ones.  The evicted youngsters scamper about, find the new mother’s legs outspread, nimbly clamber up these and mount on the back of the obliging creature, who quietly lets them have their way.