SPIDERS AND MITES. 215 



be instantly converted from a fluid into a strong rope, 

 or it would be of no use for the purposes it is intended 

 to fulfil. Let a fly, for example, become entangled in 

 the meshes of a Spider's web; no time is to be lost ; the 

 struggling victim, by every effort to escape, is tearing 

 the meshes that entangle it, and would soon succeed in 

 breaking loose did not its lurking destroyer at once rush 

 out to complete the capture and save its net, spun with 

 so much labour, from ruin. With the rapidity of thought, 

 it darts upon its prey, and before the eye of the spectator 

 can comprehend the manoeuvre, the poor fly is swathed 

 in silken bands, until it is as incapable of moving as an 

 Egyptian mummy. To allow the Spider to perform such 

 a feat as this, its thread must evidently be instanta- 

 neously placed at its disposal, which would have been 

 impossible had it been a single cord, but being sub- 

 divided into numerous filaments, so attenuated as we 

 have seen them to be, there is no time lost in the 

 drying; from being fluid they are at once converted into 

 a solid rope, ready for immediate service." * 



IS o doubt you have often admired the exquisite regu- 

 larity of those Spiders' webs which are called geometric; 

 that of our abundant Garden Spider, for instance. You 

 have observed the cables which stretch from wall to wall, 

 or from bush to bush, in various directions, to form the 

 scaffolding, on which the net is afterwards to be woven ; 

 then you have marked the straight lines, like the spokes 

 of a wheel, that radiate from the centre to various points 

 of these outwork cables, and finally the spiral thread that 

 circles agaiu and again round the radii, till an exquisite 

 net of many meshes is formed. 



But possibly you are not aware that these lines are 

 formed of two quite distinct sorts of silk. It has been 

 shown that the cables and radii are perfectly unadhesive, 

 while the concentric or spiral circles are extremely viscid. 



* " Nat. Hist, of Anim.," ii. 339. 



