.

THE BANDED EPEIRA.
BUILDING THE WEB.
The fowling-snare is one of man's ingenious villainies.

With lines, pegs and poles, two large, earth-coloured nets are stretched upon the ground, one to the right, the other to the left of a bare surface.

A long cord, pulled at the right moment by the fowler, who hides in a brushwood hut, works them and brings them together suddenly, like a pair of shutters.
Divided between the two nets are the cages of the decoy-birds--Linnets and Chaffinches, Greenfinches and Yellowhammers, Buntings and Ortolans--sharp-eared creatures which, on perceiving the distant passage of a flock of their own kind, forthwith utter a short calling note.

One of them, the Sambe, an irresistible tempter, hops about and flaps his wings in apparent freedom.