XIV IRREGULAR SNARES Bis: 
irregular structure of silk, and thus form connecting links, as 
regards habit, between the group of which we have been speaking 
and the Therididae or 
Line-weavers, which may 
now briefly be dealt, with. 
The Irregular Snare. 
—The great majority of 
British Spiders belong to 
the family of the Theri- 
diudae, or Line-weavers. 
Some of these are among 
the handsomest of ovr 
native species, and are in 
other respects highly in- 
teresting, but their snares 
lack the definiteness of 
structure exhibited by the 
orb-web, and little need 
be said about them. 
For the most part they i eae a 
Bee nes . ; Fic. 192.—Snare of Epeira basilica. 
consist of fine irregular (After M‘Cook.) 
EP 
lines running in all direc- 
tions between the twigs of bushes or among the stems of grass 
and herbage. One large and important genus, Linyphia, always 
constructs a horizontal sheet of irregular threads with a maze 
of silk above it. Such snares may be seen in myriads in the 
wayside hedves during the summer, and they are especially 
notable objects when heavily laden with dew. Insects impeded 
in their flight by the maze of threads drop into the underlying 
sheet, and are soon completely entangled. The spider usually 
runs beneath the sheet in an inverted position. 
The sheet or hammock of silk is absent in the case of most 
of the other genera of this family, their snares being innocent of 
any definite method in their structure. They are frequently 
quite contiguous, and it is no uncommon thing to find a holly 
bush completely covered with a continuous network of threads, 
the work of a whole colony of the pretty little spider 7heridion 
sisyphium. 
As might be imagined from the simplicity or absence of 
design in the structure of the net, there appears to be very little 
