How will this living fruit, ripening in the heat beloved of the Cicadae, manage to burst?  How, above all, will dissemination take place?  They are there in their hundreds.  They must separate, go far away, isolate themselves in a spot where there is not too much fear of competition among neighbours.  How will they set to work to achieve this distant exodus, weaklings that they are, taking such very tiny steps?

I receive the first answer from another and much earlier Epeira, whose family I find, at the beginning of May, on a yucca in the enclosure.  The plant blossomed last year.  The branching flower-stem, some three feet high, still stands erect, though withered.  On the green leaves, shaped like a sword-blade, swarm two newly-hatched families.  The wee beasties are a dull yellow, with a triangular black patch upon their stern.  Later on, three white crosses, ornamenting the back, will tell me that my find corresponds with the Cross or Diadem Spider (Epeira diadema, WALCK.).

When the sun reaches this part of the enclosure, one of the two groups falls into a great state of flutter.  Nimble acrobats that they are, the little Spiders scramble up, one after the other, and reach the top of the stem.  Here, marches and countermarches, tumult and confusion reign, for there is a slight breeze which throws the troop into disorder.  I see no connected manoeuvres.  From the top of the stalk they set out at every moment, one by one; they dart off suddenly; they fly away, so to speak.  It is as though they had the wings of a Gnat.

Forthwith they disappear from view.  Nothing that my eyes can see explains this strange flight; for precise observation is impossible amid the disturbing influences out of doors.  What is wanted is a peaceful atmosphere and the quiet of my study.

I gather the family in a large box, which I close at once, and instal it in the animals’ laboratory, on a small table, two steps from the open window.  Apprised by what I have just seen of their propensity to resort to the heights, I give my subjects a bundle of twigs, eighteen inches tall, as a climbing-pole.  The whole band hurriedly clambers up and reaches the top.  In a few moments there is not one lacking in the group on high.  The future will tell us the reason of this assemblage on the projecting tips of the twigs.

The little Spiders are now spinning here and there at random:  they go up, go down, come up again.  Thus is woven a light veil of divergent threads, a many-cornered web with the end of the branch for its summit and the edge of the table for its base, some eighteen inches wide.  This veil is the drill-ground, the work-yard where the preparations for departure are made.

Here hasten the humble little creatures, running indefatigably to and fro.  When the sun shines upon them, they become gleaming specks and form upon the milky background of the veil a sort of constellation, a reflex of those remote points in the sky where the telescope shows us endless galaxies of stars.  The immeasurably small and the immeasurably large are alike in appearance.  It is all a matter of distance.