INSECT ENGINEEBING. 



FIG. 65.— KITING THE CATARACT. 



bridge became compara- 

 tively easy." (Fig, 65.) 

 " You don't mean to 

 tell us that .spiders 

 really fly kites?" asked Abby rather doubtingly. 



" Well, it amounts about to that ; although, properly 

 speaking, they fly cords instead of kites. As a rule, 

 there is no object at the end of their lines which corre- 

 sponds to the kite itself, although I have sometimes 

 seen even that closely represented by broadened bits of 

 silk, hammock-shaped ribbon, attached to the filaments 

 spun out by orb-weavers when preparing for aeronautic 

 flight. However, the principle upon which a spider 

 stretches her bridge-lines across a stream, or practices 

 ballooning, is precisely that upon which American boys 

 and Chinese men fly their kites ; so that the engineer of 



