IO6 EYE SPY 
What is the method of our spider? Ages be- 
fore the advent of the human engineer he fol- 
lowed the same tactics which we now see him 
performing in every meadow, or even at our win- 
dow-sill, or on the bouquet upon our table, linking 
flower with flower, window-sill with garden fence, 
bush with bush, tree with tree, with his glistening 
suspension-bridge spanning the stream, river, and 
meadow. This wiry thread that tightens across 
our face as we ride in our carriage, and leaves its 
tingling " snap " upon our nose, what is this but 
the model suspension cable of Arachne strength- 
ened a hundredfold by the spider which has trav- 
elled back and forth over its course for hours per- 
haps, each trip leaving a fresh strand, one extrem- 
ity being anchored on yonder oak in the meadow 
and the other on the church steeple ? Such a 
cable twenty feet in length is a common chal- 
lenge in our walks in the open wood road, even 
making a perceptible motion among the leaves 
and bending twigs on either side ere it yields to 
our advance. And to the walker who cares to in- 
vestigate, a silken bridge a hundred feet in length 
is not a very exceptional find. 
This bridge-building is nbt confined to any par- 
ticular month or season, nor to any one species of 
spider. The autumn will afford us the best op- 
portunity for observation. At that season the 
spider-egg tufts are turning out their baby spi- 
