152 



The Book of Bugs. 



he think I'm a fool? One for the last card. You can't 

 do anything with spiders' webs. Where's your fifteen- 

 six? Fifteen-two, fifteen-fo'ur- Oh, yes, that's all 



right, I guess. Lemme 

 see what I got. Oh, run 

 along, Florida Blanca. I 

 don't care what you do 

 with 'em. Don't you see 

 I'm busy? Not a blame 

 thing in the crib! Well, 

 what do you think of that 

 for luck?" 



Not only did the king 

 neglect him, but all the 

 world beside, so that now 

 there is only one copy of 

 his pamphlet in all Amer- 

 ica. Dr. Wilder has trans- 

 1 a t e d it and has written 

 something himself about 

 the silk-producing capacity 

 of Ncphila phtmipcs. If you 

 turn her over on her back 



The smaller anc } p{ n } ier down with a 



shield so as to keep her 

 legs out of the road, it is possible to draw silk finer and 

 stronger and more elastic than that of the silk-worm 

 from her. She seems to like it for about three hundred 

 yards, and then she quits for a while. But in three days 

 Dr. Wilder spun out more than two miles of beautiful 

 yellow floss. Nothing is more certain than that silk can 

 be produced in unlimited quantities by almost any of the 

 orb-weaving spiders. Nothing also is more certain than 

 that the bother of feeding the creatures and collecting 



Fig. 34. Silk s\)\d.er(Nep/iilapliimi- 

 pes), male and female 

 is the male. 



