But the masterpiece of the genus is seen, especially in Corsica, in the laborious _Mygale_. Its residence is a kind of well, industriously walled round, with smooth and polished sides, and a double tapestry,--a coarse strong hanging on the earthward front, and a fine satiny hanging in the interior. The orifice of the well is closed by a door. This door is a disc, much larger at the top than at the bottom, and let into a groove in such a manner as to shut hermetically. The disc, which is not more than three lines thick, contains, nevertheless, thirty double woofs, and between the woofs intervene the same number of coats or layers of earth,--so that the entire door is really composed of sixty doors. Here, in truth, is a miracle of patience; but observe, too, the ingenuity,--all these doors of network and earth clamp into one another. The thread-doors at one point are prolonged to the wall, fastening the door to the wall as by a hinge. This door opens outwardly when the spider raises it to go forth, and closes by its own weight. But the enemy might eventually succeed in opening it. This has been anticipated. On the side opposite the hinge some small holes are worked in the door; to these the spider clings, and becomes a living bolt.[O] [Footnote O: See the works of Audouin and Walckenaër.] What would happen if this astonishing artisan, placed in peculiar and trying circumstances (like the bees under Huber's experiments), were called upon to vary its art and devise a novelty? Could it do so? Has it the intelligence, the resource, and, at need, the power of innovation which the superior insects display under certain conditions? It would be worth while to make the experiment. This, at all events, is certain, that the simple _Epeiras_ (our garden-spiders) know very well, when deprived of the necessary space for extending their geometrical curtain, how to construct one of irregular design, decreasing in proportion to the restrictions of their area. Experiments, moreover, are difficult. The spider is so nervous, that the fear which makes it an artist can also paralyze and utterly confound it. Its web alone gives it courage. Out of its web, everything makes it tremble. In captivity, having no web, it actually flees before its prey, and has not the resolution to confront a fly. Its miserable condition of passive expectancy fully explains its character. To wait, while acting, running, fighting, is to cheat both time and hunger; but to remain there immovable, to be unable to stir from fear of alarming your prey, to watch it coming nearer and nearer but eventually escaping, and to suffer from an empty stomach! To be a witness of the endless, heedless dances of the fly, which, in the sunbeam, amuses and balances itself for hours without responding to the avid prayers of the tempter which whispers, "Come, little one! Come, my darling!" is a terrible punishment, a series of hopes and disappointments. [Illustration]