TlIK SENSES AND TIIEIU OJHiANS. 309 



The question nuiy fiirthei* be raised, did the music have any effect in 

 promoting tliis habitual behavior ? I would not be willing to affirm it, 

 but it is not improbable. The vibrations of air caused by singing and 

 the sounds of flute or violin might affect spiders, as they rested upon their 

 webs in the angles and corners of the ceiling, to such a degree as to im- 

 press them with tlie idea that insects were near. No doubt there is some 

 similarity in tiie effects produced by the humming of insect's wings and 

 the vibration of musical instiaiments. It is not irrational, therefore, to 

 conclude that certain spiders may have been influeuced by musical sounds 

 to such a degree as to hasten their habitual action. But, for the most 

 part, as far as our stories are to be regarded as credible, I am inclined to 

 think that habit alone is sufficient to account for the alleged conduct of 

 the spiders. 



That they were affected by the music to the degree believed and re- 

 ported is not credible ; though it is perfectly natural that, under the cir- 

 cumstances, the observers should have so believed. Imagination could 

 have gone a far way to sujiply the details and picture the spiders as 

 gathering around the table or head of the performer in rapt attention to 

 the " concord of sweet sounds." As for the rest, one knows how stories 

 grow — how a spider or two can be multiplied into a dozen, and how a 

 dozen can readily grow into a hundred, and a natural action be involved 

 in mystery or exaggerated into marvel. But, however we dispose of these 

 widely disseminated traditions, one thing is certain, I have never been 

 able, after many experiments and observations, with all sorts of music, 

 good and bad, and with divers instruments, to see the slightest evidence 

 that spiders are in the least sensitive to music. 



IX. 



Spiders are well provided with the means of feeling the slightest move- 

 ments of their webs or other objects. On their legs and palps are long, 

 slender, silken hairs, which differ from others in that they are attached 

 to a small disk on tlie integument.^ 



It is not my purjtose to present anatomical details of the organs through 



which the sensations analogous to smelling and hearing are conveyed to 



the nerves of spiders. But somewhat lias been written upon the 



u 1 oiy jjj.^^-^gj. jy^^ .^ reference thereto will be of interest. Dahl has 



I— I Q "1 ya 



opened the way in a contribution upon the auditory organs of 

 spiders,^ and this has been freely commented upon by Mr. Waldemar 

 Wagner, of Moscow.^ 



■ Campbell, Observations on Spiders, Trans. Hertfordshire Nat. His. Soc.,Vol. I., 1880, page 40. 

 ^ Das Gehijr- und Geruchorgan des Spinnen, Zool. Anz., 1883. 



^ Des Foils Nommes Auditifs chez les Araignees. Bull, de la Societe Imper. des Nalural- 

 istes de Moscou, 1888. 



