MANUFACTURE OF PAPER. 325 



croscope, and we discern clearly that each of these spinnerets 

 are studded by bristle-like points, called " spinnemles," to 

 the number of about a thousand, from every one of which 

 proceed, in spinning, as many threads, making in all five times 

 that number, all united into one single line at a short distance 

 from the spinnerets. The reservoirs of these spider weavers 

 for their liquid silk consist of four principal and many minute 

 vessels thence proceeding. 



With a look at one other fabric, we must take leave for the 

 present of insect manufactures. 



This greyish- white substance is paper, a paper strong, 

 smooth, and durable, such as, if in sheets of size sufficient, 

 we might even now be writing on. It is composed of vege- 

 table fibres, reduced to a pulp, united by size or glue, and 

 spread out into thin leaf. It is wrought by an artificer, who 

 adopts a process precisely similar to that employed by those 

 among us of the same occupation, only with more invariable 

 success and skill. 



What may be the name of this clever paper-maker ? This 

 specimen of work nearly discloses it. It is an aggregated 

 collection of hexagonal cells, in all but material resembling a 

 honeycomb ; and a comb it is, a portion of one taken from the 

 nest of a common wasp. He"* who first found out, after twenty 

 years of vain experiment, that paper, and nothing else, is the 

 substance of which such structures are composed, describes, on 



* Reaumur. 



