web, out of which all intruders were kept. And now it was found that all these webs were inclined at nearly the same angle, and were never exactly vertical; that, like the spider in the first web she made in the Botanical Garden, the insect took a position much nearer the upper than the lower border; and also that, instead of a web of perfect circles laid upon regular radii, as used to be described and is still figured in our books, or even one of a spiral line, as is now more correctly described of ordinary geometrical spiders (Fig. 6),

and more than this, that the lines, though quite regular, were by no means perfectly so, as may be seen in Fig. 7, copied from a photograph.

As usual, the radii, or spokes, of the wheel-shaped structure are first made; then the spider begins a little way from the centre, and, passing from one radius to another, spins a series of loops at considerable distances from each other till she reaches the circumference. These first loops, like the radii, are of white, dry, and inelastic silk, and may be recognized by the little notches at their junction with the radii. The notches are made by the spider's drawing her body a little inward toward the centre of the web at the time of attaching them to the radii, and so they always point in the direction in which the spider is moving at that time, and in opposite directions on any two successive lines (Fig. 8). Having reached

Fig. 8. Section of Web. what is to be the border of her web, and thus constructed a firm framework or scaffolding, she begins to retrace her steps, moving more slowly and spinning now in the intervals of the dry loops two or three similar loops, but much nearer together and made of the elastic and viscid silk, till she has again reached her startingpoint near the middle of the web, where, on its under side, she takes a position, head downward, hanging by her claws, and thus keeping her body from direct contact with the web.

served at every stage, and under all conditions. I will merely state very briefly the few facts already established, with some of the possible explanations. The spinning mammula are placed in pairs at the lower part of the abdomen, near its hinder end, and number four, six, or eight in different species. They are little conical or cylindrical papillæ, closely resembling the prolegs of caterpillars, and are composed of two or three joints, the terminal one of which is pierced with a greater or less number of minute holes, the sides of these, in some, if not all, cases, being prolonged into tubes. Through these holes or tubes issue the fine filaments, which, uniting as they dry in the air, constitute the line from each spinner.

Fig. 4 Spinners.

Now the Nephila plumipes possesses at least three pairs of spinners. Of these, two are much larger than the third, which indeed does not appear till they are separated. From the posterior of the two largest pairs seems to proceed the white, and from the anterior the yellow silk, while from the small intermediate pair seem to proceed very fine filaments of a pale-blue color, the use of which is to envelop the prey after it has been seized and killed, being drawn out by the bristles near the tips of the spider's hinder legs. Beside these six papillæ there is, just in front of the anterior pair, a single small papilla on the middle line, the nature and use of which I have not ascertained, though I feel quite sure that no silk comes from it. The large median papilla, just behind the posterior pair, surrounds the termination of the intestines, and through it the excrement is voided, the insect for this purpose turning back the abdomen as she hangs

head downward, so that neither the web nor the spinners shall be contaminated. Now it has recently been ascertained that the minute globules with which the circles are studded, and the number of which on a web of average size is estimated at one hundred thousand, do not exist in that form when the viscid lines are first spun by the spider, but as a uniform coating of gum upon a thread; this gum, of itself and according to physical laws, soon exhibits little undulations, and then separates into the globules which have long been observed and supposed to be formed by the spider. The fact of spiders selecting the night for the construction of their webs, the difficulty of making any close observations upon them while so engaged without disturbing them, and the near approximation of the two larger pairs of spinners while the viscid line is slowly drawn out by the hind leg, have hitherto prevented my determining its exact source and manner of formation. If it comes from the anterior pair only, then one and the same organ has the power of evolving a central axis and covering it with viscid gum; and it seems less improbable that the axis is white and formed by the posterior pair, the yellow gum being spread upon it by the anterior pair, which also would then have the power to evolve this same gum at other times as an equally dry, though more elastic thread. But in either case we have only three pairs of spinners and four kinds of silk, the pale-blue fasciculi, the dry white, the dry yellow, and the viscid and very elastic silk which is employed only in the circles of the web, and which often does not become yellow till after exposure to the light. Apparently the surest method of investigation will be carefully to destroy one pair of spinners at a time without injuring the others, and then note the effect upon the spinning.

Let us go back now to the sixty spiders left at Mt. Pleasant. A few of these died on the way North, but the majority reached Boston in safety about the 20th of September, 1865;

for some time I had observed that they all were becoming more or less emaciated, and relished their food less than at first. Occasionally one died from no apparent cause. The mortality increasing toward the end of the month, and all of them losing both flesh and vigor, I was persuaded to try them with water, —a thing I had thus far declined to do, never having heard of a spider's drinking water, and knowing that our common house species can hardly get it at all. The result was most gratifying: a drop of water upon the tip of a camel's-hair pencil, not only was not avoided, but greedily seized and slowly swallowed, being held between the jaws and the palpi. All of the spiders took it, and some even five or six drops in succession. You will exclaim, "Poor things! what tortures they must have suffered!" I admit that it could not have been pleasant for them to go so long without that which they crave every day, but I cannot be lieve that creatures whose legs drop off on very slight provocation, and which never show any sign whatever of real pain, suffered very acute pangs even when subjected to what occasions such distress to ourselves.

The few survivors straightway improved in health and spirits; but being now convinced that a moist atmosphere was almost as needful as water to drink, I turned them loose in the north wing of the hot-house in Dr. Gray's Botanical Garden at Cambridge. They all mysteriously disappeared, excepting one, which made a nice web at one end just under the ridge-pole, and for several weeks lived and grew fat upon the flies; but a thorough fumigation of the house with tobacco so shocked her not yet civilized organization that she died. Her untimely death, however, afforded opportunity for a closer examination of the web itself. The first one she had made was not vertical; and, following the prevalent ideas as to the precise construction of the spider's web, I had felt somewhat ashamed of my pet, but supposed the next she made would be an improvement. But

no, the rebellious insect constantly made them all (for, it should have been said before, this spider seldom uses the same web more than forty-eight hours) after the same manner, and finally I laid it to a depraved idiocrasy, incident to captivity and poor health. But now another and most unexpected feature developed itself; for, on attempting to remove the last web by placing against it a large wire ring, and cutting the guy-lines, I found that this most degenerate spider had not only failed to make her house perpendicular, but had so far departed from the traditions of our ancestors as to have the centre thereof decidedly eccentric, and four times as near the upper as the lower border of the web, so that its upper portion was only a confused array of irregular lines, which it was impossible to secure to the frame. For any accurate observation my web was of no value. But perhaps this was best; for had I then learned what I have since, that our spider utterly ignores every precedent, not only in the position and shape of her web, but also in its minute arrangement, I might have been so affected by her evident bad character and radical proclivities, as to have feared paying her any further attentions, — much more, presenting her to the world.

But in order to understand how these further discoveries were made, we must again go back to the original sixty spiders in my room at Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina.

At the time of their capture, I had observed upon a few of the webs little brown spiders, which I then imagined might be the half-grown young. Six of these were found among the sixty larger spiders, and a moment's examination of their palpi or feelers (Fig. 5) showed that they were males, though even then I could not believe they had reached their maturity; for their bodies were only about one fourth of an inch in length, and weighed only one thirtysecond part of a grain, while the females were from an inch to an inch and a quarter in length, and weighed from three to four grains. It was as absurd

Here she will remain quiet for hours as if asleep; but no sooner does a fly or other insect strike the web, than she darts in the direction whence the vibrations proceed, and usually seizes her prey; but, strangely enough, if the insect have ceased its struggles before she reaches it, she stops, and if she cannot renew them by shaking the web with her claws, will slowly and disconsolately return to the centre of the web, there to await fresh vibrations. These and many other facts, even more conclusive, have satisfied me that, although this spider has eight eyes (Fig. 9), it is as blind as a man

Fig. 9. Face and Jaws, magnified (eyes dimly seen). with his eyelids shut, and can only distinguish light from darkness, nothing

more.

This seems to be the case with other geometrical species, but not at all with the field and hunting spiders, some of which will boldly turn upon you and look right in your eyes; they alone, of all insects, seeming to recognize the face of man as different from his body. The hearing and touch of this spider are very acute. The latter is exercised by the palpi and the tips of the legs, especially the first pair, but no ear has yet been discovered; neither is anything known of the organs of taste and smell, or even whether the insect possesses these senses at all.

I ought before this to have anticipated and answered a question which nine out of ten, perhaps, of my readers have already asked themselves, "Do not spiders bite? and is not their bite poisonous, nay, at times, deadly even to man?" The answer is, in brief, Yes, spiders do bite, probably all of them, if provoked and so confined that they cannot escape; though only a few opical species can be said to seek of eir own accord an opportunity for atking man, or any creature larger than

the insects that form their natural prey. Even the Nephila plumipes, which, it has been intimated, is "Christian in its disposition, and well-behaved beyond most of its kind," will readily bite, if it is held in the fingers and anything is put to its jaws. But that is nothing. So would you, most gentle reader, if a great giant pinched you between his thumb and finger, and held your hands and feet and head; and if, too, like our spider, you could not see enough to distinguish friends from foes. Spiders, then, will bite. But to the second part of the inquiry our answer must be less positive. They have a very bad name; but much of this is due to their grim and forbidding aspect, and their bloody trade of trapping and eating poor little insects. It is to be remembered that there are very few, if any, medical reports of injuries from the bites of spiders, and that the accounts of such cases occurring in the newspapers consist in great measure of inference, and either make no mention of the offender at all, or merely speak of a little black or gray spider being found in the vicinity. A number of experiments have been made in England to ascertain the effect of the bite of the larger geometrical spiders upon the experimenter himself, upon other spiders, and upon common insects; and the conclusion was, that it produces no greater effect than the prick of a pin, or any other injury of equal extent and severity; while the speedy death of its victim is ascribed to the spider's sucking its juices, rather than to any poison instilled into the wound. But these experiments, though somewhat reassuring, are not conclusive; for they were tried only on one person, and people vary much in their susceptibility to poison of all kinds; moreover, the spiders employed were of the geometrical kinds, which have never been so much feared as the larger field and hunting spiders. Indeed, it may be found that among spiders there is as great a difference in respect to venom as among serpents, and that those which depend upon their jaws for taking and holding their prey, such as the

field and hunting spiders, are poisonous, while the web-builders which ensnare their victims are not so. In regard to our spiders, I have caused a large one to bite, so as to draw blood, a kitten three days old, and the kitten has not appeared to suffer in the least on that account.

They are very quiet insects, and never appear disturbed at what goes on about them; neither do they run away and hide in holes and corners, like our common spiders; but if their webs are injured, or they are startled by a noise, they will shake themselves from side to side in their webs, so as to be wholly invisible. Their natural food is insects of all kinds; but they soon learn to eat soft flesh, such as the liver of chickens, for which, as well as for water, they will sometimes stretch themselves and turn in their webs so as to take it from the point of a pin or camel's-hair pencil. Besides water to drink, they require an atmosphere saturated with moisture, like that of their native isl and, the relative humidity being about seventy on the Hygrodeik scale. If stroked upon the back, they often raise their bodies as a cat does, and sometimes put back a leg to push away your finger. They may be allowed to run over one's person with perfect safety, but, if suddenly seized, will hold on with tooth as well as nail.

They are quite economical, and every few days, when the web has become too dry and dusty for use, will gather it up in a mass, which they stuff into their jaws and masticate for hours, swallowing the gum, but throwing out the rest, with the little particles of dust, in the form of a hard black pellet,—an instance rare, if not indeed unique, of an animal eating a substance already excreted from its body.

Here I must close, though much against my will. It would please me to describe, as it has almost fascinated me to observe, the doings of my spiders, as they grew older and made their webs in the Wardian cases to which they were removed when too many and too large for the jars; how VOL. XVIII.NO. 106.

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the young are gregarious, and move from place to place in a close column, protected on all sides by skirmishers, which continually report to the main body; how some of these young, whose parents were caught on Long Island, South Carolina, a year ago, and which were hatched from the egg in October last, have grown up during a Northern winter, have themselves become parents and laid eggs; how they periodically cast off their skins, even to that of the eyes, the jaws, and the breathing tubes, and how, from too great impatience, sad accidents sometimes befall them on these occasions; how, also, I have reeled silk from several of these spiders, and made a thread which has been woven in a power-loom as a woof or filling upon a warp of common black silk, so as to make a bit of ribbon two inches wide, thereby proving that it is real silk and can be treated as such.

Much, too, could be said of the only other attempts to utilize spiders' silk, a knowledge of which would have materially aided me. In France, one hundred and fifty years ago, M. Bon made gloves and stockings of silk got by carding spiders' cocoons, and seventy years later, as I have but recently ascertained, Termeyer, a Spaniard, not only used the cocoons, but also, by an observation similar to my own, was led to reel the silk from the living insect. He, however, had poorer spiders or too little perseverance, or friends and a government influenced by a most short-sighted economy and prudence, else the highly interesting and instructive account of his experiments would have been familiar to some one in this country, and would not have waited these many years to be found by accident last spring in an obscure corner of the Astor Library.

I will add, finally, that I believe some other geometrical spiders, especially of the genus Nephila, may be found as docile, and as productive of beautiful silk, as the species I have described. any rate, you cannot find a more interesting inmate of your Wardian case than some large geometrical spider.

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