Chap. 28.] SPIDERS. 27 



their extreme lightness in summer : for, so greatly have man- 

 ners degenerated in our day, that, so far from wearing a cuirass, 

 a garment even is found to be too heavy. The produce of the 

 Assyrian silk- worm, however, we have till now left to the 

 women only. 



chap. 28. (24.) — spiders ; the kinds that make webs ; the 

 materials used by them in so doing. 



It is by no means an absurdity to append to the silk- worm 

 an account of the spider, a creature which is worthy of our 

 especial admiration. There are numerous kinds of spiders, how- 

 ever, which it will not be necessary here to mention, from the 

 fact of their being so well known. Those that bear the name 

 of phalangium are of small size, with bodies spotted and run- 

 ning to a point ; their bite is venomous, and they leap as they 

 move from place to place. Another kind, again, is black, and 

 the fore-legs are remarkable for their length. They have all of 

 them three joints in the legs. The smaller kind of wolf-spider 87 

 does not make a web, but the larger ones make their holes in 

 the earth, and spread their nets at the narrow entrance thereof. 

 A third kind, again, is remarkable for the skill which it dis- 

 plays in its operations. These spin a large web, and the ab- 

 domen suffices to supply the material for so extensive a work, 

 whether it is that, at stated periods the excrements are largely 

 secreted in the abdomen, as Democritus thinks, or that the 

 creature has in itself a certain faculty of secreting 88 a peculiar 

 sort of woolly substance. How steadily does it work with its 

 claws, how beautifully rounded and how equal are the threads 

 as it forms its web, while it employs the weight of its body as 

 an equipoise ! It begins at the middle to weave its web, and 

 then extends it by adding the threads in rings around, like a 

 warp upon the woof: forming the meshes at equal intervals, 

 but continually enlarging them as the web increases in breadth, 

 it finally unites them all by an indissoluble knot. With what 

 wondrous art does it conceal the snares that lie in wait 

 for its prey in its checkered nettings ! How little, too, would 

 it seem that there is any such trap laid in the compactness of 



enacted "ne vestis Serica viros faedaret" — "That men should not defile 

 themselves by wearing garments of silk," Ann. B. ii. c. 33. 



87 The Aranea lupus of Linnseus. 



83 As Cuvier observes, he has here guessed at the truth. 



