392 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1917. 



SPIDERS. 



Among the spiders collected on Paradise Key are several of un- 

 usual interest. One of them, Nephila clavijyes, constructs a beauti- 

 ful web composed of fine, silken threads which glisten in the sun 

 like burnished gold. Its silk has been woven into fabrics. A second 

 species, Miranda aurea, fonns a peculiar egg cocoon resembling a 

 miniature paper balloon. A third species, Phidippus audax^ spins 

 no web at all, but catches its prey by jumping upon it and drags it 

 backward to its den. It has iridescent jaws and bright red eyes, 

 from which it may well take its name of " ruby-eyed monster." 



The life histories of many spiders as well as of certain groups of 

 insects are so tragic that the writer ventures here to repeat what has 

 already been expressed by Maeterlinck; since it is so strikingly 

 applicable to conditions on Paradise Key. With other classes of 

 animals and even with plants man feels a certain kinship, but spi- 

 ders and insects are not of his world; their strange habits, ethics, 

 and psychology seem to belong to some other planet, where the con- 

 ditions are more monstrous, more active, more insane, more atrocious, 

 more infernal than in our own. It is hard for us to believe that these 

 monsters are conceptions of that Nature whose privileged children 

 we love to imagine ourselves to be. We are horrified at the atroci- 

 ties they commit; their clandestine thefts, their ignoble parasitism; 

 the bold robberies, the murders, cannabalism, mariticide, for which 

 many of them seem especially adapted. Frightfulness and ruth- 

 lessness appear to be a very part of their nature; and we stand 

 appalled when it dawns upon us that these creatures are far better 

 armed and equipped for their life's work than we for ours. We 

 almost dread them as our rivals and ultimate successors, as the dom- 

 inant inhabitants of this globe. 



THE SPIDER THAT SPINS TEXTILE SILK. 



Outside the gauze screen of the park lodge veranda the writer 

 noticed a geometrical spiderweb, in which insect victims of all 

 descriptions had been ensnared, ranging in size from mosquitoes 

 to huge grasshoppers and dragon flies. In the center of the web 

 was the lady spider who had constructed it, and near its margin 

 the diminutive male, who seemed to be hanging 'round in a shiftless 

 sort of way, subsisting on such scraps of food as she might leave. 

 Specimens of these spiders (fig. 15) were identified by Mr. C. R. 

 Shoemaker of the United States National Museum as Neph'da 

 clavipes, a species celebrated from the fact that its silk has actually 

 been woven into fabrics, specimens of which, in the form of bed 

 curtains, were exhibited at the Paris Exposition. In order to obtain 

 the silk a large number of females were kept in captivity, each by 



