The Garden Spiders: Building the Web 



the spinstress approaches the auxiliary chords 

 that have just served as her support. When, 

 in the end, these chords become too close, they 

 will have to go; they would impair the sym- 

 metry of the work. The Spider, therefore, 

 clutches and holds on to the rungs of a higher 

 row; she picks up, one by one, as she goes 

 along, those which are of no more use to her 

 and gathers them into a fine-spun ball at the 

 contact-point of the next spoke. Hence arises 

 a series of silky atoms marking the course of 

 the disappearing spiral. 



The light has to fall favourably for us to 

 perceive these specks, the only remains of the 

 ruined auxiliary thread. One would take 

 them for grains of dust, if the faultless reg- 

 ularity of their distribution did not remind 

 us of the vanished spiral. They continue, still 

 visible, until the final collapse of the net. 



And the Spider, without a stop of any kind, 

 turns and turns and turns, drawing nearer to 

 the centre and repeating the operation of fix- 

 ing her thread at each spoke which she 

 crosses. A good half-hour, an hour even 

 among the full-grown Spiders, is spent on 

 spiral circles, to the number of about fifty for 

 the web of the Silky Epeira and thirty for 



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