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water. They seemed to be encased, as it were, in perfectly transparent quick- 

 silver. Every hair, every limb, every frag:ment of the creature, was to be seen in 

 the insect most splendidly. Then to see their mode of life was altogether to view 

 how the Almighty has made everything perfect after its kind. To notice these 

 things beguiles many an hour, and is rather seductive in making one neglect 

 other work so as to meditate on what we call Nature. These water-spiders, for 

 there are very few in G reat Britain, form their nests and homes in water and are 

 copiously supplied with hair which, when distended, beautifully retains the 

 atmosphere they have imbibed, and which also they keep in their watery 

 houses. Here we may introduce the subject of their nests. These nests are 

 formed on aquatic plants below the upper surface of the water. They are used as 

 nurseries for the young spiders after hatching, and for places in which the eggs 

 are laid ; also as the permanent home of the animal itself, as well as the feeding 

 home to which all food is brought for consumption. The nest is strongly made 

 of the material used for the web, and has been compared to a diving bell, the wide 

 open part or mouth always being lowermost. It is into this part that the 

 creature goes, and whilst inside it by day and night, he always lives head 

 downwards. You will readily understand that the nest must be secure, and not 

 a moveable air-containing ball. This is done by threads of the web being made 

 which act like strings and cords of a tent. By one or more of these, the spider goes 

 to get fresh air from the top of the water. But you will want to know how it is 

 that when the web is made into the nest, and the nest approaches the requisite 

 shape it is charged with atmosphere. The spider ascends to the surface, and just 

 as he is ready to descend with a volume of atmosphere, he crosses his two hind 

 legs at an acute angle, bounds off as quickly as possible to the nest, and has no 

 sooner entered it than he discharges into it the volume just collected. Off he 

 goes, again and again, until the full amount needed is obtained. Then his work 

 is done, and he can stay there, catching his prey which gets entangled in the 

 meshes of his web, or he can go to sleep perhaps for the whole of the very cold, 

 wintry weather, and wake again by-and-bye. 



I should greatly like to see a living trap-door spider just outside his nest, 

 taking as it were a survey of his home and the country at large. It must be very 

 interesting to see him. The lid of his house would be raised, and he would be 

 ready at the slightest notice of alarm to jump inside, closing the door so tightly 

 after him that it would scarcely be possible to detect the top of it at all, so exactly 

 does it correspond with all the surroundings. A novice — if he did not notice the 

 exact spot through close observation and keep his eye on it — would not possibly find 

 it. The nest is formed by the spider of a sort of webbing which it spins and which 

 is not unlike a wasp's nest, as to touch. If examined with the help of a microscope, 

 the characters of a true web are found to consist of a flocculent, weblike matter. 

 The lid of the nest, or rather the outside of it, is of a different texture from the 

 other parts, and for this reason. The spider wants to be secure, and therefore, in 

 making the nest while the exterior is still gummy, intermixes with the top of the 

 lid a lot of the surrounding material, be it soil, moss, or whatever else are the 

 component parts surrounding it. This is the cause why the nests, when once shut, 



