348 ARACHNIDA—ARANEAE CHAP. 
of their vast numbers and regularity, the circumstance naturally 
excited great wonder and admiration. Blackwall! estimated that, 
in a fourteen-inch net of LHpeira cornuta, there were at least 
120,000 viscid globules, and yet he found that its construction 
occupied only about forty minutes! The feat, from his point of 
view, must be allowed to be rather startling. 
As a matter of fact, the thread, on being slowly drawn out, 
is uniformly coated with viscid matter which afterwards arranges 
itself into beads, the change being assisted by the sudden libera- 
tion of the stretched line. 
Boys” has shown their formation to be quite mechanical, and 
has obtained an exact imitation of them by smearing with oil a 
fine thread ingeniously drawn out from molten quartz. The oil 
arranged itself into globules exactly resembling the viscid 
“beads” on the spider’s line. If the web be carried bodily away 
on a sheet of glass, as above described, while the spider is engaged 
upon the spiral line, the experimenter will have permanent 
evidence of the manner in which the globules are formed. The 
last part of the line will be quite free from them, but uniformly 
viscid. Tracing it backwards, however, the beads are soon found, 
at first irregularly, but soon with their usual uniformity. The 
thread which the spider has thus “limed” for the capture of 
prey is really two-stranded—the strands not being twisted, but 
lying side by side, and glued together by their viscid envelope. 
The snare is now practically complete, and the proprietor 
takes up her position either in the centre thereof, or in some 
retreat close at hand, and connected with the hub by special 
lines diverging somewhat from the plane of the web. Not- 
withstanding the possession of eight eyes—which, in sedentary 
spiders, are by no means sharp-sighted—it is mainly by the sense 
of touch that the spider presently becomes aware that an insect 1s 
struggling in the net. She immediately rushes to the spot, and 
suits her action to the emergency. 
If the intruder is small, it is at once seized, enveloped in 
a band of silken threads drawn out from the spinnerets, and 
carried off to the retreat, to be feasted on at leisure. If it seems 
formidable it is approached carefully—especially if armed with a 
sting—and silk is deftly thrown over it from a safe distance till 
it is thoroughly entangled, and can be seized in safety by the 
' Rep. Brit. Ass. 1844, p. 77. 2 Nature, xl., 1889, p. 250. 
