SPIDER GOSSIP. 



91 



fashion. Other threads are fixed in the same plane, so as to 

 form a frame within which the geometric web is built. But garden 

 spiders have another way of beginning. For reasons best known 

 to themselves, they do not always care to walk a long way round. 

 They prefer a short cut, which short cut, however, often turns out 

 to be a long one. Some calm evening, when the air is without 

 any breeze perceptible to our senses, a spider will get to the lee- 

 side of a bush, and, walking out to the end of a projecting twig, 

 will raise its abdomen and let out thread — not an ordinary solid 

 thread — that would be too heavy — but something different. 



Fastening " of a spider's thread. Magnified 170 diameters. 



Instead of letting the discharge-tubes converge towards one point 

 as usual, it spreads them, like it does when about to make a 

 fastening, and thus it emits its many threadlets in a more or less 

 separate condition. These are so very, very fine that they stream 

 out on the wings of the tiniest zephyr. By-and-by, two or three 

 will catch in the neighbouring twigs. Somehow the spider feels 

 this, and, after hauling in the slack, fastens down her end of the 



