When the Epeira cannot manage a fall of sufficient depth to give her the double line with its loop to be fixed at a distance, she employs another method.  She lets herself down and then climbs up again, as we have already seen; but, this time, the thread ends suddenly in a filmy hair-pencil, a tuft, whose parts remain disjoined, just as they come from the spinneret’s rose.  Then this sort of bushy fox’s brush is cut short, as though with a pair of scissors, and the whole thread, when unfurled, doubles its length, which is now enough for the purpose.  It is fastened by the end joined to the Spider; the other floats in the air, with its spreading tuft, which easily tangles in the bushes.  Even so must the Banded Epeira go to work when she throws her daring suspension-bridge across a stream.

Once the cable is laid, in this way or in that, the Spider is in possession of a base that allows her to approach or withdraw from the leafy piers at will.  From the height of the cable, the upper boundary of the projected works, she lets herself slip to a slight depth, varying the points of her fall.  She climbs up again by the line produced by her descent.  The result of the operation is a double thread which is unwound while the Spider walks along her big foot-bridge to the contact-branch, where she fixes the free end of her thread more or less low down.  In this way, she obtains, to right and left, a few slanting cross-bars, connecting the cable with the branches.

These cross-bars, in their turn, support others in ever-changing directions.  When there are enough of them, the Epeira need no longer resort to falls in order to extract her threads; she goes from one cord to the next, always wire-drawing with her hind-legs and placing her produce in position as she goes.  This results in a combination of straight lines owning no order, save that they are kept in one, nearly perpendicular plane.  They mark a very irregular polygonal area, wherein the web, itself a work of magnificent regularity, shall presently be woven.

It is unnecessary to go over the construction of the masterpiece again; the younger Spiders have taught us enough in this respect.  In both cases, we see the same equidistant radii laid, with a central landmark for a guide; the same auxiliary spiral, the scaffolding of temporary rungs, soon doomed to disappear; the same snaring-spiral, with its maze of closely-woven coils.  Let us pass on:  other details call for our attention.

The laying of the snaring-spiral is an exceedingly delicate operation, because of the regularity of the work.  I was bent upon knowing whether, if subjected to the din of unaccustomed sounds, the Spider would hesitate and blunder.  Does she work imperturbably?  Or does she need undisturbed quiet?  As it is, I know that my presence and that of my light hardly trouble her at all.  The sudden flashes emitted by my lantern have no power to distract her from her task.  She continues to turn in the light even as she turned in the dark, neither faster nor slower.  This is a good omen for the experiment which I have in view.