308 



been noticed descending from ceilings during a concert and returning when the 

 concert was over. 



The pill-box process for catching spiders is good, but, like everything else, 

 is not perfect nor of universal application. A bottle with some methylated spirit 

 of wine is a useful thing. It is useful with a wide mouth, if you wish to put 

 spiders you have captured into it. Or, if it has a narrow mouth, you can use it 

 for stopping the runaway creatures wishing to escape you. You know that a 

 camel hair brush, touched with the saliva at the point of one's tongue, will check 

 an insect's course when it touches it. Spirit of wine is equally efficacious. A 

 great deal depends upon the knowledge of the habits of special spiders to make 

 one successful in their capture. Some drop down to the ground at once ; others 

 escape at any angle they can best make from their capture ; others are in the 

 middle, perhaps, of a box tree. Some, when alarmed, rush backwards into their 

 hiding-place, and cannot be induced to return to their front entrance where they 

 had been first seen. Others, again, must be taken by violently shaking the 

 boughs of the trees in which they live — a cloth, or sheet, or something not of the 

 same colour as themselves liaving been previously placed underneath. A 

 butterfly net, such as is used by entomologists for moths, is of much service when 

 you are working for those species which live only in grass. Shaken considerably 

 in the grass, it takes within it many a surprised spider which cannot escape, if 

 the collector is diligent in his work. 



With regard to the classification of the spiders. Englishmen have not 

 worked very much — not so much, indeed, as they have done in other matters — 

 certainly not on account of the difficulty of the subject. The pioneer in their 

 study was a Dr. Martin Lister, who, in the year 1678, published a work upon 

 them called " Tractiis de Araneis." From his time until the Ray Society pub- 

 lished Mr. Blackwall's History of the Spiders of Great Britain and Ireland, in 

 1801, nothing of importance was done except by our Continental neighbours. 

 Good work, however, is being done now at home. There are many students 

 amusing themselves with getting anecdotes about them, up to those who really 

 study them as a branch of natural science. But about the classification of spiders. 

 They really are more difficult to classify than most creatures. Spiders are not 

 true insects, because the body has only two instead of three segments. Then 

 again, they have no wings to help in their discrimination. There are no antennae, 

 so that insects, because they have these extra parts of their body, can much 

 more easily be certified than spiders can. As far back as Aristotle, we have 

 remarks made by him as to the different ways in which the webs were made. 

 Indeed, the system in which spiders seized their prey was noted. Dr. Berthau, 

 some few years ago, grouped the spiders into two sub-orders — Tetrasticta 

 and Tristicta. Of the first of these he made a specific difference to consist 

 in their stigmata or breathing apparatus. They had two pairs on the lower 

 surface of the abdomen. In the other there is only one pair of stigmata. 

 In the first the ovaries and testes were circular, the entrance to the seminal 

 pouches was simple ; in the other the ovaries and testes were in two branches, 

 and there were two openings in the seminal pouches. These sub-orders are, of 



