SPIDERS. 



337 



If Aristotle, for example, had ever looked narrowly 

 at a spider when spinning, he could not have fancied, 

 as he does, that the materials which it uses are 

 nothing but wool stripped from its body. On look- 

 ing then, with a strong magnifying glass, at the teat- 

 shaped spinnerets of a spider, we perceive them 

 studded with regular rows of minute bristle-like 

 points, about a thousand to each teat, making in all 

 from five to six thousand. These are minute tubes 

 which we may appropriately term sjAnnerules, as 

 each is connected with the internal reservoirs, and 

 emits a thread of inconceivable fineness. In the 

 figure below, this wonderful apparatus is represented 

 as it appears in the microscope. 



Spinnerets of a Spider magnified to show the Spiniierules. 



We do not recollect that naturalists have ventured 

 to assign any cause for this very remarkable multi- 

 plicity of the spinnerules of spiders, so different from 

 the simple spinneret of caterpillars. To us it ap- 

 pears to be an admirable provision for their mode of 

 life. Caterpillars neither require such strong ma- 

 terials, nor that their thread should dry as quickly. 



VOL. IV. 29 



