362 ARANEID.E — TRUE SPIDERS. 



naturally of different colors ; particularly white, yellow, gray, 

 , sky-blue, and coffee-colored brown/ 



A Spider raiser in France, more recently, is said to have 

 tamed eight hundred Spiders, which he kept in a single 

 apartment for their silk.'-^ 



De Azara states that in Paraguay a Spider forms a 

 spherical cocoon for its eggs, an inch in diameter, of a 

 yellow silk, which the inhabitants spin on account of the 

 permanency of the color.^ 



The ladies of Bermuda make use of the silk of the Silk- 

 Spider, Epeira clavipes, for sewing purposes.* 



The Spider-web fabric has been carried so nearly to trans- 

 parency (in Ilindostan) that the Emperor Aureugzebe is said 

 to have reproved his daughter for the indelicacy of her 

 costume, while she wore as many as seven thicknesses of it.^ 



Astronomers employ the strongest thread of Spiders, the 

 one, namely, that supports the web, for the divisions of the 

 micrometer. By its ductility this thread acquires about a 

 fifth of its ordinary length.*^ 



Topsel, in his History of Four-footed Beasts and Ser- 

 pents, has the following, which he calls an " old and com- 

 mon verse : 



Nos aper auditu prtecellit, Aranea tactu, 

 Vultur odoratu, lynx visu, simia gustu. 



Which may be Englished thus : 



To hear, the boar, to touch, the Spider us excells, 



The lynx to see, the ape to taste, the vulture for the smells." '' 



"It is m.anifest," says Moufet, "that Spiders are bred of 

 some aereall seeds putrefied, from filth and corruption, be- 

 cause that the newest houses the first day they are whited 

 will have both Spiders and cobwebs in them."^ This theory 

 of generation from putrefaction was a favorite one among 

 the ancient writers; see the history of the Scorpion. 



1 Vide Hist, and Mem. de V Acad. Royaledes Sciences, anu. 1710; Dis- 

 sert, by M. Bon, Sur Vutilite de la soye des Arraigi}6es, 8vo. Also, 

 Bancroft on Permanent Colors, i. 101 ; and Shaw's Nat. Hist., vi. 481. 



2 New Amer. Cyclop. 



8 Voy. dans vAmer. 3ferid., i. 212. K. and S. Introd., i. 337. 

 * Naturalist in Bermuda, p. 126. 



5 Atlantic Monthly, June, 1858, p. 92. 



6 Nouv. Diet, d'llist. Nat., ii. 280. K. and S. Introd., i. 337, note. 

 ' Hist, of Beasts and Serpents, p. 778, 



8 Theatr. lns.,i>. 235. Topsel's Trans., p. 1072. 



