140 The Book of Bugs. 



I am not going into a complex description of how the 

 spider lays off her web except to say that, when it extends 

 across any considerable distance, she has stood on her 

 head as nearly as she could and emitted a thread which 

 the wind blew till it caught on something. Then she 

 took in the slack and bit it off and threw it away. After 

 the line was taut she crept out on it, always keeping in 

 touch with the home-plate, till she got to the further end, 

 which she made good and secure. Then back to the 

 middle again, where she dropped on the end of her line 

 to the ground and made fast there. After that she 

 worked according to the way her people have done since 

 the days when the wood was growing that we now call 

 coal. If it be an orbed snare, then all the outer crossbars 

 are gummed with beads of tanglefoot for careless flies. 

 There is a comparatively open space around the center 

 so that the scuffle that always takes place when there is 

 fresh meat for supper may not wreck the web too vitally, 

 and right in the center itself is usually a nice neat little 

 mat for her to sit on, made of dry, unsticky silk and 

 woven like a crazy quilt or one of these hit-or-miss 

 stained-glass windows. Sometimes, instead of plain 

 radii, she cards her silk into a flock-like ribbon and zig- 

 zags it down one compartment of the web. Some spiders 

 make an all-round snare; some make a snare like a pie 

 with a piece cut out, and one kind makes a snare shaped 

 like the piece of pie that has been cut out. This last sits 

 there with the slack of her web drawn up tight between 

 her feet and waits. A fool fly bumps into the line. She 

 lets everything go by the run, and the sticky slack falls 

 over the fly. She spreads her spinnerets and drops a 

 flat ribbon of threads over it. The more it kicks, the 

 more it tangles itself. When she can safely do so, the 

 spider bites her prey till it gives up. Then she sucks the 



