Let us go every evening, step by step, from one border of tall rosemaries to the next.  Should things move too slowly, we will sit down at the foot of the shrubs, opposite the rope-yard, where the light falls favourably, and watch with unwearying attention.  Each trip will be good for a fact that fills some gap in the ideas already gathered.  To appoint one’s self, in this way, an inspector of Spiders’ webs, for many years in succession and for long seasons, means joining a not overcrowded profession, I admit.  Heaven knows, it does not enable one to put money by!  No matter:  the meditative mind returns from that school fully satisfied.

To describe the separate progress of the work in the case of each of the six Epeirae mentioned would be a useless repetition:  all six employ the same methods and weave similar webs, save for certain details that shall be set forth later.  I will, therefore, sum up in the aggregate the particulars supplied by one or other of them.

My subjects, in the first instance, are young and boast but a slight corporation, very far removed from what it will be in the late autumn.  The belly, the wallet containing the rope-works, hardly exceeds a peppercorn in bulk.  This slenderness on the part of the spinstresses must not prejudice us against their work:  there is no parity between their skill and their years.  The adult Spiders, with their disgraceful paunches, can do no better.

Moreover, the beginners have one very precious advantage for the observer:  they work by day, work even in the sun, whereas the old ones weave only at night, at unseasonable hours.  The first show us the secrets of their looms without much difficulty; the others conceal them from us.  Work starts in July, a couple of hours before sunset.

The spinstresses of my enclosure then leave their daytime hiding-places, select their posts and begin to spin, one here, another there.  There are many of them; we can choose where we please.  Let us stop in front of this one, whom we surprise in the act of laying the foundations of the structure.  Without any appreciable order, she runs about the rosemary-hedge, from the tip of one branch to another within the limits of some eighteen inches.  Gradually, she puts a thread in position, drawing it from her wire-mill with the combs attached to her hind-legs.  This preparatory work presents no appearance of a concerted plan.  The Spider comes and goes impetuously, as though at random; she goes up, comes down, goes up again, dives down again and each time strengthens the points of contact with intricate moorings distributed here and there.  The result is a scanty and disordered scaffolding.

Is disordered the word?  Perhaps not.  The Epeira’s eye, more experienced in matters of this sort than mine, has recognized the general lie of the land; and the rope-fabric has been erected accordingly:  it is very inaccurate in my opinion, but very suitable for the Spider’s designs.  What is it that she really wants?  A solid frame to contain the network of the web.  The shapeless structure which she has just built fulfils the desired conditions:  it marks out a flat, free and perpendicular area.  This is all that is necessary.