Possibly this is asking too much of her resources.  The silk-glands may be exhausted after the laying of the great spiral; and to repeat the same expenditure immediately is out of the question.  I want a case wherein there could be no appeal to any such exhaustion.  I obtain it, thanks to my assiduity.

While I am watching the rolling of the spiral, a head of game rushes fun tilt into the unfinished snare.  The Epeira interrupts her work, hurries to the giddy-pate, swathes him and takes her fill of him where he lies.  During the struggle, a section of the web has torn under the weaver’s very eyes.  A great gap endangers the satisfactory working of the net.  What will the spider do in the presence of this grievous rent?

Now or never is the time to repair the broken threads:  the accident has happened this very moment, between the animal’s legs; it is certainly known and, moreover, the rope-works are in full swing.  This time there is no question of the exhaustion of the silk-warehouse.

Well, under these conditions, so favourable to darning, the Epeira does no mending at all.  She flings aside her prey, after taking a few sips at it, and resumes her spiral at the point where she interrupted it to attack the Moth.  The torn part remains as it is.  The machine-shuttle in our looms does not revert to the spoiled fabric; even so with the Spider working at her web.

And this is no case of distraction, of individual carelessness; all the large spinstresses suffer from a similar incapacity for patching.  The Banded Epeira and the Silky Epeira are noteworthy in this respect.  The Angular Epeira remakes her web nearly every evening; the other two reconstruct theirs only very seldom and use them even when extremely dilapidated.  They go on hunting with shapeless rags.  Before they bring themselves to weave a new web, the old one has to be ruined beyond recognition.  Well, I have often noted the state of one of these ruins and, the next morning, I have found it as it was, or even more dilapidated.  Never any repairs; never; never.  I am sorry, because of the reputation which our hard-pressed theorists have given her, but the Spider is absolutely unable to mend her work.  In spite of her thoughtful appearance, the Epeira is incapable of the modicum of reflexion required to insert a piece into an accidental gap.

Other Spiders are unacquainted with wide-meshed nets and weave satins wherein the threads, crossing at random, form a continuous substance.  Among this number is the House Spider (Tegenaria domestica, LIN.).  In the corners of our rooms, she stretches wide webs fixed by angular extensions.  The best-protected nook at one side contains the owner’s secret apartment.  It is a silk tube, a gallery with a conical opening, whence the Spider, sheltered from the eye, watches events.  The rest of the fabric, which exceeds our finest muslins in delicacy, is not, properly speaking, a hunting-implement:  it is a platform whereon the Spider, attending to the affairs of her estate, goes her rounds, especially at night.  The real trap consists of a confusion of lines stretched above the web.