United States or Nepal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They are scarcely half buried before some beetle runs to them and destroys them by an eviscerating wound." At the centre of its net, which seems "woven of moonbeams," in the midst of its snare, a glutinous trap of infernal ingenuity, or hidden at a distance in its cabin of green leaves, the Epeïra fasciata waits and watches for its prey.
To Fabre they are so many feats of a learned unconsciousness. "See the nest, the accustomed masterpiece of mothers; it is more often than otherwise an animal fruit, a coffer full of germs, containing eggs in place of seeds." The satin bag of the Epeïra fasciata, in which her eggs are enclosed, "breaks at the caress of the sun, like the skin of an over-ripe pomegranate."
The Epeïra fasciata is incapable of replacing a single radial thread in the geometrical structure of its web, when broken; it recommences the entire web every evening, and weaves it at one stretch with the most beautiful mastery, as though merely amusing itself.
But we know with certainty that the gnat, Stegomya fasciata, and no other, is the carrier of the unseen germ, and that we can obliterate that fever by obliterating the gnat. So, too, although we know how the infection of rabies acts, and how it is carried, yet no one has yet isolated and recognised the terrible infective particle itself.
Say, 'articulate, first; then roll out, 'Arthropoda; and you shall see whether zoological science is not progressing! In bearing and colouring, Epeira fasciata is the handsomest of the Spiders of the South. On her fat belly, a mighty silk-warehouse nearly as large as a hazel-nut, are alternate yellow, black and silver sashes, to which she owes her epithet of Banded.
Nowhere, in the whole animal kingdom, has the need to eat inspired a more cunning industry. If the reader will meditate upon the description that follows, he will certainly share my admiration. In bearing and colouring, Epeira fasciata is the handsomest of the Spiders of the South.
Germany has Dzierzon, Van Berlespoch, Pollmann, Vogel, and many others. Nor is this book to be a scientific monograph on Apis Mellifica, Ligustica, Fasciata, Dorsata, etc., or a collection of new observations and studies. I shall say scarcely anything that those will not know who are somewhat familiar with bees.
Separated by marked peculiarities both of structure and instinct, from the spiders which live in the open air, and busy themselves in providing food during the day, the Mygale fasciata is not only sluggish in its habits, but disgusting in its form and dimensions. It is familiar to Europeans in Ceylon, who have given it the name, and ascribed to it the fabulous propensities, of the Tarentula.
Word Of The Day