Weihaiwei, Sept. 20—Before this stormy summer season ends 1 would like to make a few more notes-about spiders. An engineer friend has-helped me, and while T watched Gertrude and Zinnia in my garden he watched a spider in his verandah. Some of his results were quite amazing, for he tells me that his spider had at times three or more webs on the "chain store" system, und took toll from each, she used the wind-blown and "drop and swing" methods for her main supports: she. started her web a Hittle more than half way down the full circle and completed the lower half fist: she commenced "webbing" from the outside ring, -pul-ting in erose supports as she went along. All of which confirms my observations that there is nothing regular about. the method, which must depend upon atmospheric conditions from time to time. So now for Gertrude and Zinnia. Gertrude (she of the telephone Wire) sticks to the wind-blown method: if the winds are too strong—as they have been—she does not even worry about a proper web: a litre' house-spider-like webbing between the wires will keep the wolf from the door. In milder weather the main direction of the web changes dally with the wind, because it is destroyed daily bby large inseéts—not to mention gardeners. Gertrude is still with me and 1 can see her most unfair-like form clinging to the wire as T write these lines. Zinnia way a food-hog: I twas because she has now deserted me: afier filling herself with the juice of the now dying Cicadas, she caught a Japanese beetle—Wrapped it up in webbing and took it to her parlour beneath the bird-bath: after ten minutes she peeled it like an orange and sucked it for two hours, Then she walked out-and has not been seen since. Query: do spiders suffer from indigestion?—r.s.w.
Weihaiwei, Sept. lit 1 walked round my little domain by moonlight and ran Into a hedgehog: "he was cornered against a stone wall, and so could not escape as rapidly be would have wished. What memories he brought me. for his very name is redolent of English hedgerows... of gypsies sitting round a camp-fire in some green lane cating Toasted hedgehog (you smother him in. clay and roast him whole, so that when he is, cooked the hard clay brings off bristles, skin ahd all)
for kings, for on the whole the inedgehog is a clean feeder. This very question of the hedgehog's food has brought him into 2i repute and made him the target of every famekeeper's gun or club: because suspected of stealing the eggs of ground-nesting game birds (perhaps he does and, if 30, wine of tt The amount of harm he does must Infinitesimal): he is also suspected by" the country-falke of searching for cows lying down sleep, and sucking their milk. It's interesting note this as a parallel to the old belief that the Nightjar (or Goatsucker) Mies under the goats and steals their milk... just. because the bird is seen ying round goats to catch the insects which they attract! tu actual fact the hedgehog feeds on grubs, worms, insects, frogs or anything else he can catch: he is not' above eating a little carrion such as dead mice and rats... for he never could catch them alive, 'When' winter comes he will go to sleep beneath some pile of rubbish and not wake up until the mad March hares are quibbling over their love affairs: a nice little creature which can be fed on scraps from the house, if you can only get him to all at the back door. Rolled in a ball of prickly spines, even dogs cannot tackle him; but a badger can and does. As in many other cases, his downfall is drink "for he loves water, and it is by the side of Stream or pool that his enemies generally get Weihaiwei, Sept, 24—A number of goats feeding in the hills behind my house remind me of an old piece of "weather wisdom" in England: if you see goats cropping the grass, standing or moving head to wind, it is the sign of a fine day; if they graze tail to wind you may expect rain, This belief may not be' abstird as it looks at the first glance, for the prevalent "rain-wind" may bring the goats some discomfort which they avoid by turning their backs to it. But our goats can face which way they" like," for it has not rained for over a month. As September draws to a close I always get the impression that nature is making on final effort to defeat the coming of winter many of my apple and pear trees come out with crazy "water shots" and begin to blossom as if the time of year were spring: all grasses row suddenly tall and begin to seed: funguses of all kinds and colours spring up from nowhere, and "fairy rings" begin to form on even the smallest lawns: this 1s a quite natural consequence of the springing of the fungi for the true fairy ring is a fungoid growth which extends in an ever-widening circle as the years Fall by; some of these rings become quite fam-fous in the Home country and exceed five hundred feet in width= it appears that the bare part of the ring is where the tiny spawn has enveloped the grass roots; the green circle being the part where the spawn dies and serves as manure for the young grass. Small fairy rings caused by pools of water are another pro~ biem.—but they cannot appear here where there are no pools. My litre friend the hedgehog has been seutlling round again at night and 1 think that he, like other small hibernating animals, is "stoking up" against the coming Winter? and that reminds me of another curl-fous hedgehog story: in the autumn he is supposed to roll among the fallen apples and carry them home on his spikes for winter food! Although Tam living among apples and hedgehogs T can assure all readers that a quadruped ooking like a perambulating toffee-apple stall hae never come my Way—Eswv.
Assumption Axo when a conceited sailor gets ashore he assumes he's the salt of the earth, Caught "Witesr, did you meet your wife?"
didn't meet her. She overtook me."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.