The Banded Epeira and the Silky Epeira, those experts in the manufacture of rainproof textures, lay their eggs high up, on brushwood and bramble, without shelter of any kind.  The thick material of the wallets is enough to protect the eggs from the inclemencies of the winter, especially from damp.  The Diadem Epeira, or Cross Spider, needs a cranny for hers, which is contained in a non-waterproof felt.  In a heap of stones, well exposed to the sun, she will choose a large slab to serve as a roof.  She lodges her pill underneath it, in the company of the hibernating Snail.

More often still, she prefers the thick tangle of some dwarf shrub, standing eight or nine inches high and retaining its leaves in winter.  In the absence of anything better, a tuft of grass answers the purpose.  Whatever the hiding-place, the bag of eggs is always near the ground, tucked away as well as may be, amid the surrounding twigs.

Save in the case of the roof supplied by a large stone, we see that the site selected hardly satisfies proper hygienic needs.  The Epeira seems to realize this fact.  By way of an additional protection, even under a stone, she never fails to make a thatched roof for her eggs.  She builds them a covering with bits of fine, dry grass, joined together with a little silk.  The abode of the eggs becomes a straw wigwam.

Good luck procures me two Cross Spiders’ nests, on the edge of one of the paths in the enclosure, among some tufts of ground-cypress, or lavender-cotton.  This is just what I wanted for my plans.  The find is all the more valuable as the period of the exodus is near at hand.

I prepare two lengths of bamboo, standing about fifteen feet high and clustered with little twigs from top to bottom.  I plant one of them straight up in the tuft, beside the first nest.  I clear the surrounding ground, because the bushy vegetation might easily, thanks to threads carried by the wind, divert the emigrants from the road which I have laid out for them.  The other bamboo I set up in the middle of the yard, all by itself, some few steps from any outstanding object.  The second nest is removed as it is, shrub and all, and placed at the bottom of the tall, ragged distaff.

The events expected are not long in coming.  In the first fortnight in May, a little earlier in one case, a little later in the other, the two families, each presented with a bamboo climbing-pole, leave their respective wallets.  There is nothing remarkable about the mode of egress.  The precincts to be crossed consist of a very slack net-work, through which the outcomers wriggle:  weak little orange-yellow beasties, with a triangular black patch upon their sterns.  One morning is long enough for the whole family to make its appearance.

By degrees, the emancipated youngsters climb the nearest twigs, clamber to the top, and spread a few threads.  Soon, they gather in a compact, ball-shaped cluster, the size of a walnut.  They remain motionless.  With their heads plunged into the heap and their sterns projecting, they doze gently, mellowing under the kisses of the sun.  Rich in the possession of a thread in their belly as their sole inheritance, they prepare to disperse over the wide world.