42 SPIDER WEBS 



How a Falling Spider catches Itself. — Gently brush a small 

 spider off from a book or pencil. Does it fall to the ground ? 

 How does it catch itself ? Does it hang by its head, or by the 

 hind part of its body ? With what part of its body does it spin 

 its thread ? How does it pull itself up again ? 



How a Spider hunts. — A web is a spider's hunting net 

 which it spreads for insects. Some of the threads are sticky 

 and cling to the insects which touch them. As an insect 

 struggles to get free it becomes entangled in other threads, for 

 the sticky threads stretch. If the threads did not stretch, what 

 would be likely to happen when a large fly stuck fast in a web ? 



Web Bridges and Balloons. — Have you ever felt spider webs 

 on your face as you walked along a path ? When some kinds 

 of spiders wish to travel, the}^ crawl up a post or tree and spin 

 lines so light that the wind holds them up. The lines catch in 

 neighboring trees, and then the spiders have suspension bridges 

 on which they can travel. Sometimes a spider will cut his line 

 loose and float away on it for a long distance as on a balloon. 



Place a small bottle in a dish of water, and in the bottle 

 stand a stick or long lead pencil. Place a spider on the stick. 

 The water will prevent the spider from crawling away. Watch 

 the spider as he spins a thread, and escapes by means of it. 



Spider Web Cloth. — Twist some spider webs into a string. 

 How strong a string can you make ? Spider's thread is a kind 

 of silk, and has been woven into cloth of great thinness and 

 beauty. 



Kinds of Spider Webs. — The common house spiders build 

 webs that are a tangle of threads running in every direction. 

 These webs are called cobwebs. 



In the morning you may often see flat spider webs spread 

 out on the grass, looking like saucers of pearls as they are 

 filled with shining dewdrops. Examine one of these webs and 

 notice the tube in which the spider lives. Notice also that the 

 tube has a back door out of which the spider escapes when you 

 try to catch it. 



