201 [Wilder. 



By a letter written on the 20tli of August, 1863, from the camp 

 of the 55th Mass. Vol. Inf , at the north end of Folly Island, South 

 Carolina, I find that " on that day I caught a large and very hand- 

 some spider, from which, as it stood quiet near the top of my tent, 

 I wound off silk upon a quill for an hour and a quarter, at the rate of 

 six feet per minute, making four hundred and fifty feet or one hun- 

 dred and fifty yards." 



This silk is still in my possession, but has been removed from the 

 quill for the purpose of ascertaining its weight, which is one-third of a 

 grain. I had never heard of this method of obtaining silk ; neither 

 had I ever seen or read of such a spider ; but, though this specimen 

 was not preserved, I was so impressed with its size and the peculiar 

 aspect given by the brushes of stiff hairs upon the legs, that when, 

 during the following summer, another officer * of our regiment described 

 to me a large spider very common upon Long Island, which lies just 

 west from Folly Island, I knew it was che same species and told him 

 what I had done, adding that I was " sure something would come of it 

 sometime." By substituting a cylinder worked with a crank, for mine 

 turned in the fingers, this officer obtained more of the silk, which he 

 wound in grooves cut upon rings of hard rubber, and in other directions 

 upon the sides of such rings ; while another officer ; f by employing a 

 "gear drill stock" with cog-wheels, accomplished similar results still 

 more rapidly ; on the first simple machine I wound off silk into two 

 grooves cut in the periphery of a hard rubber ring, parallel except at 

 one point where they crossed to form a kind of signet, the silk being 

 guided at this crossing by a pin upon a pivot moved by the hand at 

 each revolution of the ring; and on the " gear drill stock " upon a 

 larger ring one inch in diameter and three-eighths of an inch in width, 

 in a groove upon its periphery one-fourth of an inch in width, and across 

 the sides of the ring in two directions, I wound tliree thousand four 

 hundred and eiglihj yards, or nearly two miles of silk. This length 

 was estimated by accurately determining the different dimensions of 

 the ring where wound upon, and multiplying by this the number of 

 revolutions of the cylinder per minute (170), and this product again 

 by the number of minutes of actual winding (285), having deducted 

 from the gross time of winding (about nine hours), each moment of 

 stoppage for any cause. 



This was in the autumn of 1864, and so the matter rested till Feb. 

 1865, when, preparing to present the subject to the Society, I showed 

 specimens of the spider and silk to Professors Wyman, Agassiz, 

 and Cooke of Harvard University, to all of whom both the species of 



* Major Sigourney Wales, 55th Mass. Vols, 

 t Lieut. Col. Chas. B. Fox. 



