38o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cocoons out with her on her hunting expeditions, attached to the 

 spinnerets. 



Last summer I kept a garden spider for three weeks under 

 a tumbler, and had the pleasure of watching her building her 

 house of snowy silk, with its three entrances, and raising a large 

 family of children. She soon learned to take flies from my 

 hand and drink water from a leaf which I gave her fresh every 

 day. After a time she seemed to languish and droop, so I set 

 her free in the garden once more. 



If you wish to live and thrive, 

 Let a spider run alive, 



says the old Kentish proverb. 



PETROLEUM, ASPHALT, AND BITUMEN.* 



By M. a. JACCAED. 



PETROLEUM, asphalt, and bitumen may be regarded as so 

 related to one another, so like in origin and properties, as 

 to be callable of being considered in the same treatise ; and we 

 may, therefore, speak properly now of one, now of the other. The 

 oldest known form of natural hydrocarbon was the bitumen 

 which rose to the surface of the Dead Sea, called from that cir- 

 cumstance the Asphaltum Lake. Tradition says that it used to 

 appear on the surface in considerable masses, and was collected 

 by the Arabs and exported to Egypt, where it was used in em- 

 balming, and for a few purposes in the arts. The ancients were 

 also acquainted with the liquid form of bitumen, petroleum. 

 Herodotus speaks of the mineral oil of Zante ; and other Greek 

 authors mention the springs of Agrigentum, the product of which 

 was burned in lamps, and was known as Sicilian oil. The fire 

 worshipers of Persia erected temples over the burning springs. 



Of the use of these substances in the middle ages, and later, 

 we chiefly know that the petroleum springs of Pechelbronn, in 

 the sixteenth century, spontaneously furnished mineral oil in 

 such quantities that the peasants around used it to feed their 

 lamps and grease their carriage wheels. The virtues of the min- 

 eral springs of the Jura Mountains were made known in 1712 by 

 a Greek doctor, who pronounced them a treasure that had been 

 unknown from the beginning of the world. Since then new 

 sources have been discovered in all parts of the world, and the 



* Froin Le Petrole, le Bitiime et I'Asphalte. Par A. Jaccard, Professeur de Geologie h, 

 I'Academie de Neufchatel. Paris: Felix Alcan, 1895. 



