66 AMERICAN SPIDERS 



The Papuan natives make landing nets from the orb webs of 

 Nephila. A. E. Pratt describes this practice as follows: 



One of the curiosities of Waley (near Yule Bay), and, in- 

 deed, one of the greatest curiosities that I noted during my stay 

 in New Guinea, was the spiders' web fishing-net. 



In the forest at this point huge spiders' webs, 6 feet in diam- 

 eter, abounded. These are woven in a large mesh, varying from 

 i inch square at the outside of the web to about Y 8 th inch at the 

 centre. The web was most substantial, and had great resisting 

 power, a fact of which the natives were not slow to avail them- 

 selves, for they have pressed into the service of man this spider, 

 which is about the size of a small hazel-nut, with hairy, dark- 

 brown legs, spreading to about 2 inches. This diligent creature 

 they have beguiled into weaving their fishing-nets. At the place 

 where the webs are thickest they set up long bamboos, bent over 

 into a loop at the end. In a very short time the spider weaves 

 a web on this most convenient frame, and the Papuan has his 

 fishing-net ready to his hand. He goes down to the stream and 

 uses it with great dexterity to catch fish of about i Ib. weight, 

 neither the water nor the fish sufficing to break the mesh. The 

 usual practice is to stand on a rock in a backwater, where there 

 is an eddy. There they watch for a fish and then dexterously 

 dip it up and throw it on the land. Several men would set up 

 bamboos so as to have the nets ready all together, and would 

 then arrange little fishing parties. It seems to me that the web 

 resisted water as readily as a duck's back. 4 



Although Pratt's account has not been verified, there is never- 

 theless more reason to believe that it could be true of Nephila webs 

 rather than of the garden variety of orb web. It is not difficult to 

 persuade the spider to use a bamboo hoop, since it is a most suitable 

 framework for a web, and we know that American orb weavers 

 sometimes oblige by spinning a web on a frame supplied them. It 

 is also true that the radii of the Nephila webs are more numerous, 

 and that the many closely set spirals would contribute to the 

 strength of the web. The spiral line becomes a permanent part of 

 the web and thus multiplies its strength. Finally, it is possible that 

 immersion in water contributes in a mechanical way to the strength, 

 making the struggles of the fish less liable to rupture the lines. 



*E. A. Pratt, Two Years Among New Guinea Cannibals, London, 1906, 

 p. 268. 



