198 The Naturalist in La Plata 
coil up his cord to make a bed to lie on, and also 
use it for binding branches together when build- 
ing himself a refuge. In a close fight, he would 
endeavour to entangle an adversary, and at last he 
would learn to make a snare with it to capture his 
prey. To all these, and to a hundred other uses, 
the spider has put his web. And when we see him 
spread his beautiful geometric snare, held by lines 
fixed to widely separated points, while he sits con- 
ceaied in his web-lined retreat amongst the leaves 
where every touch on the far-reaching structure is 
telegraphed to him by the communicating line 
faithfully as if a nerve had been touched, we must 
admire the wonderful perfection to which he has 
attained in the use of his cord. By these means he 
is able to conquer creatures too swift and strong for 
him, and make them his prey. When we see him 
repairing damages, weighting his light fabric in 
windy weather with pebbles or sticks, as a fisher 
weights his net, and cutting loose a captive whose 
ereat strength threatens the destruction of the web, 
then we begin to suspect that he has, above his 
special instinct, a reason that guides, modifies, and 
m many ways supplements it. It is not, however, 
only on these great occasions, when the end is 
sought by unusual means, that spiders show their 
intelligence ; for even these things might be con- 
sidered by some as merely parts of one great com- 
plex instinct; but at all times, in all things, the 
observer who watches them closely cannot fail to be 
convinced that they possess a guiding principle 
which is not mere instinct. What the stick or stone 
was to primitive man, when he had made the dis- 
