THE INSTINCT OF SPIDERS 127 



No attempt at repair is made this evening. I visit 

 the snare the following morning. The spider is still 

 at the centre ; a number of insects are strung along 

 the filaments, but the rent still remains. Indeed it 

 is enlarged, for the snare is here weakened and gives 

 way further before the strain. The fact remains that 

 there is no attempt to repair the damage. This a 

 spider cannot do. It cannot seek out the ends of its 

 severed radii and connect them with new filaments ; 

 it cannot pick up the points of its damaged spiral and 

 join them with new lines. I do not believe it can 

 even contemplate, far less appreciate, the nature of 

 the ruin. Such an act as this is outside its daily 

 work. It can build up and it can tear down, but to 

 repair a broken filament is beyond its feeble mind. 



Once the work of construction is over the sole duty 

 of the spider is to sit at the centre of its snare and 

 await the entanglement of insects. Injury to the 

 architecture is then of no concern to the spider. 

 When evening approaches the fabric will be renewed. 

 The instinct to reconstruct will then impel the archi- 

 tect to work; but till that hour arrives it feels no 

 impulse but to sit and wait. 



Let us consider the spider engaged in the con- 

 struction of its snare. Is it then in the same sub- 

 jection to its instincts as when it sits patiently waiting 

 for its food? It is fulfilling a complex and difficult 

 duty. It is performing each act with mathematical 

 precision. It is building up a fragile and harmonious 

 texture, and every thread must be in place or the final 

 symmetry will be lost. Through all this delicate 

 workmanship is the spider an intelligent agent or only 

 an unconscious tool ? Has it any power to modify 



