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well get these copies of the web, especially if, in the frosty morninss of spring .and 

 autumn, we notice the best webs glistening in the dew as the sun shines on them. 

 We can then select the most perfect and the easiest to take. An interesting 

 experiment was made some time since, and is recorded in the journal of the R.M.S. 

 for 1882, in which a Dr. Anthony succeeded in getting the threads of the web of the 

 garden spider, each of them separate from the other, so that they did not form 

 themselves into the one cable we see when looking at a web. Tn the example he took, 

 he managed to get some 200 threads in continuous regularity from the creature. 

 This is a small number, as is well known, and proved that the spinnerets give out 

 many more hundreds ; and the conclusion necessarily arrived at is that the spider 

 can, at will, use as many as he wishes, to the non-use of others. However, the 

 idea on which the experiment was made arose from the knowledge that when a 

 spider begins making its web, it must begin without these hundreds of threads 

 uniting and forming the one cable. To intercept him, therefore, at this identical 

 and critical time was to hope to be successful. It was successful. The spider 

 began his web on one of the ordinary glass slips used by microscopists, 3 by 1 in. 

 Having begun, there was no great difficulty in continuing the work of winding on 

 the slip, because the spider, always careful not to use much web, was so high in the 

 air that he dare not nip off his thread, but as he lowered himself towards the 

 ground, anxious for his own safety, his web was given out, retaining the threads 

 intact one from the other on the slip of glass. These threads are compared by Dr. 

 Anthony to harp-strings, and he says that, view them under the microscope in any 

 way you will, they are very splendid, but especially so under dark ground illumina- 

 tion, when the hundreds of silver-like wires of exquisite delicacy are glorious to 

 behold. Another experiment was made with equally satisfactory results with the 

 common little " money spider." 



In the month of May, 1888, I was asked to remove a spider which was 

 considered as being more furniture than was required for a bedroom, and not 

 being disposed to kill it, I captured it in an ordinary wineglass inverted. 

 The next morning I found the spider had spun its web most beautifully in the 

 glass, and, upon examination, wherever the creature had begun his web there was 

 an evident proof thereof, because the start was very foggy in appearance, caused 

 by the spinnerets being pressed upon the glass, and that from every nipjale in each 

 spinneret a separate attachment was made to the glass. Very likely you may 

 have seen the end of a string or rope — I mean the very end ; uncoiled and soaked 

 in water, it would occupy much more space than the cirumference of the rope ; 

 just so the web is not coiled at the end, but much wider than elsewhere. This 

 demonstration was very interesting. 



Before leaving the subject of the threads in the webs of spiders, let me give 

 you the measurement, as far as I can, so that we may form an estimate of what 

 they are, and are capable of doing. I take that of a cellar spider. For extreme 

 accuracy, I have not an object glass higher than 1-lGth of an inch immersion, and 

 yet even under this power, only a measurement very near perfection is obtained. 

 After the most correct drawing, the micrometer gives a width for the thread, 

 showing that 20,000 would be placed side by side in an inch. Eacli thread, therefore. 



