132 GEOMETRIC SPIDERS. 



This is a strange supposition, viewed either as poetic or as 

 popular, but stranger still was that of Dr. Hooke, a learned 

 philosopher and first Fellow of the Eoyal Society, who lived 

 in times so much nearer our own as the latter part of the 

 17th century. On microscopic scrutiny of these webs, " looking 

 most like a flake of worsted ready to be spun/' he surmised 

 that ' ' it was not unlikely that those great white clouds that 

 appear all the summer time may be of the same substance." 



From the floating lines and aerial chariots of the Spiders 

 which make Gossamer, let us descend to a few of the humbler 

 fabrics woven by the same and various other species, to serve 

 as habitations or as snares. 



Who is not familiar (too familiar for appreciation of their 

 excellent workmanship) with the radiate wheel-like nets so 

 common in gardens and on hedges throughout the summer, 

 and on dewy autumn mornings rendered so brightly conspi- 

 cuous by the liquid pearls which they serve to string ? In 

 addition to these borrowed gems, the spiral lines of geometric 

 webs have been shown by the microscope to be beset by a 

 number of viscid globules. The ingenious weavers of these 

 " wheels within wheels," are various species of that tribe of 

 Spiders called, from their lines and circles, the Geometric; 

 those of them most commonly known are "the Garden' 

 (Epeira Dladema] and "the Long-bodied } ' (TetragnatJia 

 extensa), noticed already among the aeronauts. As with these, 

 the first operation of our geometric spinner is to throw out a 



