SPIDERS. 



293 



composed of two united within the tnhe of the spinneret, 

 but the spider's thread would appear, from the first view of 

 its five spinnerets, to be quintuple, and in some species 

 which have six teats, so many times more. It is not safe. 



Garden Spicier (^Eperira diadema'), suspended hy a thread proceeding from its spinneret. 



however, in our interpreiations of nature to proceed upon 

 conjecture, however plausible, nor to take anything for 

 granted which we have not actually seen ; since our infer- 

 ences in such cases are almost certain to be erroneous. 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 looking, 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 spinnendes, as each is 

 connected with the internal reservoirs, and emits a thread 



