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Common terms and phrasesabdomen Angular Epeira animal attack auxiliary spiral Banded Epeira becomes belly Bernard Miall bite brushwood Bumble-bee burrow cages capture caught central centre Chaffinches climbs close Clotho comes cord Crab Spider Cross Spider curve distance Dragon-fly dwelling edge eggs eyes fabric fangs fastened favourable flings GARDEN SPIDERS goes hanging hind-legs hunting huntress insect J. H. Fabre Labyrinth Spider laying leaves legs light lime-snare lime-threads Locust logarithmic spiral Lycosa mandibles matter Mollusc Moth mother motionless mouth move movement Narbonne neck neighbour nest never night once pill poison possesses prey remains resting-floor round satin side silk Silky Epeira snare species spin spinnerets spinstress spokes sticky straw stretched suspension-cable Tarantula Tegenaria domestica telegraph-wire things Thomisus thread tion turns twigs victim Walck wallet watch weave webs wherein wind youngsters Popular passagesPage 30 - ... near to penury, but lit up every day by the joy which a truth brings, which is the greatest of all human joys. Petty truths, I shall be told, those presented by the habits of a spider or a grasshopper. There are no petty truths to-day ; there is but one truth, whose looking-glass, to our uncertain eyes, seems broken, though its every fragment, whether reflecting the evolution of a planet or the flight of a bee, contains the supreme law. Page 29 - ... day and night pass over their ecstasy, while they remain face to face, petrified with admiration. Next, the foreheads come together and touch; the mouths — if we can give the name of mouth to the monstrous orifice that opens between the claws — are joined in a sort of kiss; after which the union is accomplished, the male is transfixed with a mortal sting and the terrible spouse crunches and gobbles him up with gusto. Page 399 - If the sun pierce the mist, the whole lights up with iridescent fires and becomes a resplendent cluster of diamonds. The number e is in its glory. Geometry, that is to say, the science of harmony in space, presides over everything. We find it in the arrangement of the scales of a fir-cone, as in the arrangement of an Epeira's... Page 34 - Because I have stirred a few grains of sand on the shore, am I in a position to know the depths of the ocean ? 'Life has unfathomable secrets. . Human knowledge will be erased from the archives of the world before we possess the last word that the Gnat has to say to us.... Page 7 - Fabre, who is one of the most profound and inventive scholars and also one of the purest writers and, I was going to add, one of the finest poets of the century that is just past. Page 21 - This explanation would tempt me if the large oval pieces were not accompanied by much smaller ones, also oval, which are used to fill the empty spaces. A pair of compasses which changes its radius of its own accord and alters the curve according to the plan before it appears to me an instrument somewhat difficult to believe in. There must be something better than that. The circular pieces of the lid suggest it to us. " If, by the mere flexion inherent in her structure, the Leaf-cutter succeeds in... Page 9 - The insect does not belong to our world. The other animals, the plants even, notwithstanding their dumb life and the great secrets which they cherish, do not seem wholly foreign to us. In spite of all, we feel a certain earthly brotherhood in them. Page 238 - ... disordered labor must result in a confused piece of work. Wrong: the rays are equidistant and form a beautifully regular circle. Their number is a characteristic mark of the different species. The Angular Epeira places twenty-one in her web, the Banded Epeira thirty-two, the Silky Epeira fortytwo. These numbers are not absolutely fixed; but the variation is very slight. Now which of us would undertake, offhand, without much preliminary experiment and without measuring-instruments, to divide a... Page 34 - Success is for the loud talkers, the self-convinced dogmatists; everything is admitted on condition that it be noisily proclaimed. Let us throw off this sham and recognize that, in reality, we know nothing about anything, if things were probed to the bottom. Scientifically, Nature is a riddle without a definite solution to satisfy man's curiosity. Hypothesis follows on hypothesis; the theoretical rubbish-heap accumulates; and truth ever eludes us. To know how not to know might well be the last word... Page 10 - ... our eyes do not see? There is, no doubt, in this astonishment and lack of understanding a certain instinctive and profound uneasiness inspired by those existences incomparably better-armed, betterequipped than our own, by those creatures made up of a sort of compressed energy and activity in whom we suspect our most mysterious adversaries, our ultimate rivals and, perhaps, our successors. References to this bookFrom Google ScholarBallooning dispersal using silk: world fauna, phylogenies ...JR Bell, DA Bohan, EM Shaw, GS Weyman - 2007 - Bulletin of Entomological Research Body Size, Leg Autotomy, and Prior Experience as Factors in the ...Gary N Dodson, Aaron T Schwaab - 2001 - Journal of Insect Behavior Territoriality In A Cannibalistic Burrowing Wolf SpiderJordi Moya-Laraño, Juan Manuel Orta-Ocaña, José Antonio Barrientos, Carmen Bach, David H Wise - 2002 - Ecology Mating patterns in late-maturing female Mediterranean tarantulas ...Jordi Moya-Laraño, Jordi Pascual, David H Wise - 2003 - Animal Behaviour Bibliographic information
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