Rural School Leaflet 



895 



A crab spider 



A jumping 

 spider 



They live chiefly on plants and fences; some of the species conceal them- 

 selves in flowers, where they lie in wait for the visiting insects. These 

 spiders are colored like the flower in which 

 they hide; they are yellow when in the 

 goldenrod, and white when in the white 

 trillium. 



The running spiders. — These are large, 

 dark-colored, hairy spiders often found under 

 stones and logs or boards. They run very 

 swiftly and thus overcome and capture their prey. They spin no webs, 

 but the mother spider makes a very beautiful globular sac in which she 

 places her eggs, and she often carries this egg sac with her, attaching it to 

 herself by means of her spinnerets. 



The jumping spiders.— These spiders are of medium size. They make 

 no webs, but spin nests in which they hide in the winter or when laying 

 eggs. They have short, stout legs, are often gray and black, but some- 

 times have bright colors. They are remarkable for their powers of jump- 

 ing. They move sidewise or backward with great ease and can jump a 

 long distance. One of these jumping spiders, " dressed in a suit of pepper 

 and salt," we often find on a windowpane, and if you put the point of a 

 lead pencil within an inch of his face, you are likely to see a remarkably 

 high jump. He regards the moving pencil as a fly and it is his business 

 on the windowpane to catch flies by jumping and seizing them, as a cat 

 jumps after a mouse. 



Much has been said about the bloodthirstiness of the spider; but spiders, 

 like the rest of us, are obliged to eat in order to live, and their ways of 

 securing their prey are no cruder than our methods of procuring chicken 

 or lamb for our tables. To one who has watched the spiders carefully 

 it would seem that, after all, their chief characteristic is patience. They 

 spin their webs and then sit and wait until some unwary insect is entangled, 

 and whole days may elapse before a meal is thus obtained. 



Method. 



LESSON FOR THE PUPILS 



Talk with the pupils about the different kinds of spiders and 



ask them to observe 

 not desirable that 

 the spiders or 

 though none of the 

 York State are 

 handle . All of them 



A running spider carrying her egg sac 



their webs. It is 

 the children handle 

 collect them, al- 

 spiders i n New 

 dangerous to 



when they bite — 

 which they never do unless they are forced to in self-defense — leave some 

 \'enom in the wound which might occasion some pain, but usually not so 



