NOTES ON AUSTRALIAN ARANEIDJE — RAINBOW. 



221 



it from the compound web to be described later on. The main 

 body of the mesh consisted of the typical orb, with the customary 

 outer lines or guys, but at the back, and running down the 

 centre, a semi-orb had been built. This latter may not have been 

 the work of the architect of the complete orb ; it may have been 

 purely adventitious. I am the more convinced that this is so, 

 because I have carefully examined many webs since, and have 

 not found another example, and I certainly think I should if it 

 had been the result of instinct. At the time I discovered this 

 web I sought for the architect, but it had evidently made good 

 its escape, and was probably simulating death amongst rubbish, 

 or hiding in some quiet nook or corner. Occasionally orb webs 

 may be met with that have two or three more or less horizontal 

 lines fixed to the hub and some adjacent object. These lines 

 communicate with a tubular or leafy retreat and, as they are 

 drawn tightly, cause the snare to be somewhat depressed at the 

 centre. 



Fx"equently huge orbicular 

 snares are erected at consider- 

 able heights. I have recorded 

 one such that I saw on the South 

 Head Road, Belle View Hill, 

 Sydney, 19 the topmost trans- 

 verse line of which ran from a 

 tree on one side of the road to a 

 telegraph post on the other. By 

 a well directed stone, I succeeded 

 in bringing the builder down, 

 and it proved to be the common 

 Araneus herione, L.K. It is 

 remarkable. considering how 

 fragile these structures are, the 

 amount of wind-pressure they 

 can bear; this is due, no doubt, 

 to their elasticity. The com- 

 jjound web, to which I referred 

 above, consists of an orb, and an 

 elaborate and complicated reti- 

 telarian snare, which latter is 

 sometimes at the rear of the 

 web, sometimes at both sides of it, and sometimes continued 

 both above and below (fig. 13) much like some of the snares 

 constructed by certain species of Aryiope. 



Pig. 13. Compound Web. 



X9 Rainbow — Loc. cit., p. 531. 



17 



