462 Mr. F. Pollock on the History and 



Hitherto we have been treating only of the females. There is 

 a very great difference between their size and that of the males, 

 the latter, when full-grown, being only /gths of an inch long, 

 with a fore leg \ an inch. Moreover the male has only four 

 changes of skin, which appear to take place at much the same 

 periods as the corresponding changes of the female. Indeed 

 the habits and history of both sexes are precisely similar until 

 the fourth change, but no longer. The male then entirely ceases 

 making webs, eats nothing, and, from having been very seden- 

 tary, becomes a rover, wandering about from web to web of the 

 females. His abdomen, from want of food, shrinks ; and his 

 thorax, partly from contrast, and partly owing to his large palpi, 

 bears a different proportion to that of the females, and makes 

 him rather unlike them. 



This spider makes a flat, circular web, which it hangs in a 

 nearly vertical position. The webs of the youngest have the 

 same beautiful symmetry as those of the oldest spiders. They 

 consist of strong, tightly stretched, and inadhesive radial lines, 

 crossed by a much thinner and looser spiral line, or concentric 

 circles, which are very sticky. 



In a full-sized web there are about 250 feet of thread, made 

 up of about 35 radial lines and 38 concentric circles, the outer 

 of which is some 20 inches in diameter. 



The web is almost invariably constructed at or near early 

 dawn, seldom or never during the day, the old one being de- 

 stroyed before a new one is begun. 



The radial lines are first made ; then the outer circle, from 

 which the spider, walking round and round the web, and work- 

 ing towards the middle, lays down the spiral line, joining it to 

 the radial lines wherever they cross each other. 



At a distance of about two or three inches from the centre this 

 gummy line ceases, and there is an interval sufficiently large to 

 allow the spider to creep through to the other surface of the 

 web ; the spiral line is then resumed, rather irregularly, to the 

 centre, but it is no longer adhesive, so that the spider has always 

 a dry and comfortable resting-place. 



Sometimes (though not always) it works upon the web, and 

 from its centre, a broad, white, zigzag line of thread, in a vertical 

 direction ; and I am inclined to think from this, that a certain 

 quantity of the web-producing fluid is daily secreted, and, if 

 there be any surplus, it is got rid of in this elegant manner, 

 which the natives of Madeira call " writing the spider's name " 

 on the web. 



After the lapse of a day or two, the adhesive property of the 

 web disappears, and it no longer catches flies : a fresh one must 

 consequently be made, sometimes daily, sometimes after two 



