The Banded Epeira
Not at all: the bag is woven around nothing, as accurate in shape, as finished in structure as under normal conditions. The absurd perseverance displayed by certain Bees, whose egg and provisions I used to remove,[1] is here repeated without the slightest interference from me. My victims used scrupulously to seal up their empty cells. In the same way, the Epeira puts the eiderdown quilting and the taffeta wrapper round a capsule that contains nothing.
Another, distracted from her work by some startling vibration, leaves her nest at the moment when the layer of red-brown wadding is being completed. She flees to the dome, at a few inches above her unfinished work, and spends upon a shapeless mattress, of no use whatever, all the silk with which she would have woven the outer wrapper if nothing had come to disturb her.
Poor fool! You upholster the wires of your cage with swan's-down and you leave the eggs imperfectly protected. The absence of the work already executed and the hardness of the metal do not warn you that you
- ↑ These experiments are described in the author's essay on the Mason Bees entitled Fragments on Insect Psychology.—Translator's Note.
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