PECKHAM. [Vol. I. 



414 



line. She began to search for it, stretching out her first legs, 

 and running about over the branches. After hunting for twenty- 

 five minutes she touched a strand leading to the web, and ran to 

 it, taking up her work just where it had been interrupted. 



Both of these spiders were spinning their webs at the usual 

 time, — toward nightfall, — and, had they not regained them, 

 would probably have gone without their suppers, and perhaps 

 their breakfasts and dinners the next day. Any interruption in 

 the food-supply must be in a high degree detrimental, and we 

 therefore incline to the opinion that we have here an important 

 factor in the development, at least among orb-weavers, of the 

 habit of lying motionless after dropping out of the web. 



It seems probable that the habit of keeping quiet in time of 

 danger is better developed in adult than in young spiders. In 

 the few experiments that we have made on this point the young 

 spiders neither remained motionless so long, nor endured so 

 much handling while keeping still, as the old ones. Thus, the 

 adult E. bombycinaria will frequently lie motionless for hours ; 

 but in working with three young spiders of this species, we 

 never saw them keep still for more than half a minute at a 

 time. 



Our experiments on this subject numbered two hundred and 

 ten. They were made upon spiders from nineteen different 

 genera. 



The consideration of the meaning of the so-called habit of 

 feigning death may be appropriately prefaced by the following 

 quotations from Darwin and Romanes : — 



" Animals feigning, as it is said. Death — an unknown state to 

 each living creature — seemed to us a remarkable instinct. 

 I agree with those authors who think that there has been much 

 exaggeration on this subject: I do not doubt that fainting (I 

 have had a robin faint in my hands) and the paralyzing effects 

 of excessive fear have sometimes been mistaken for the simula- 

 tion of death. Insects are most notorious in this respect. We 

 have amongst them a most perfect series, even within the same 

 genus (as I have observed in Curculio and Chrysomela), from 

 species which feign only for a second and sometimes imper- 

 fectly, still moving their antennae (as with some Histers), and 

 which will not feign a second time however much irritated, to 

 other species which, according to De Geer, may be cruelly 



