To save herself from keeping a close watch that would degenerate into drudgery and to remain alive to events even when resting, with her back turned on the net, the ambushed Spider always has her foot upon the telegraph-wire.  Of my observations on this subject, let me relate the following, which will be sufficient for our purpose.

An Angular Epeira, with a remarkably fine belly, has spun her web between two laurestine-shrubs, covering a width of nearly a yard.  The sun beats upon the snare, which is abandoned long before dawn.  The Spider is in her day manor, a resort easily discovered by following the telegraph-wire.  It is a vaulted chamber of dead leaves, joined together with a few bits of silk.  The refuge is deep:  the Spider disappears in it entirely, all but her rounded hind-quarters, which bar the entrance to the donjon.

With her front half plunged into the back of her hut, the Epeira certainly cannot see her web.  Even if she had good sight, instead of being purblind, her position could not possibly allow her to keep the prey in view.  Does she give up hunting during this period, of bright sunlight?  Not at all.  Look again.

Wonderful!  One of her hind-legs is stretched outside the leafy cabin; and the signalling-thread ends just at the tip of that leg.  Whoso has not seen the Epeira in this attitude, with her hand, so to speak, on the telegraph-receiver, knows nothing of one of the most curious instances of animal cleverness.  Let any game appear upon the scene; and the slumberer, forthwith aroused by means of the leg receiving the vibrations, hastens up.  A Locust whom I myself lay on the web procures her this agreeable shock and what follows.  If she is satisfied with her bag, I am still more satisfied with what I have learnt.

The occasion is too good not to find out, under better conditions as regards approach, what the inhabitant of the cypress-trees has already shown me.  The next morning, I cut the telegraph-wire, this time as long as one’s arm and held, like yesterday, by one of the hind-legs stretched outside the cabin.  I then place on the web a double prey, a Dragon-fly and a Locust.  The latter kicks out with his long, spurred shanks; the other flutters her wings.  The web is tossed about to such an extent that a number of leaves, just beside the Epeira’s nest, move, shaken by the threads of the framework affixed to them.

And this vibration, though so close at hand, does not rouse the Spider in the least, does not make her even turn round to enquire what is going on.  The moment that her signalling-thread ceases to work, she knows nothing of passing events.  All day long, she remains without stirring.  In the evening, at eight o’clock, she sallies forth to weave the new web and at last finds the rich windfall whereof she was hitherto unaware.