246 EVENINGS AT THE SnCEOSCOPE. 



Behind this first pair are seen the middle pair, al 

 most concealed, however, from their shortness and 

 smallness, and from the approximation of the first and 

 third paii's. We can discern that they are more teat- 

 like than the preceding, terminating in a minute wart, 

 ■which is prolonged into a horny tube. The whole teat 

 is set with similar tubes, which are larger and longer 

 than those of the first pair. Finally, the third pair 

 resemble palpi, for each consists of two lengthened 

 joints and are bluntly pointed. The spinning tubes in 

 these are limited, as it appears to me, to one or two at 

 the extreme end of each spinneret, the whole surface 

 besides being covered with the ordinary long bristles. 

 Strictly, speaking, however, they are three-jointed, for 

 all the spinnerets spring from wart-like sockets, which 

 may be considered as basal joints ; and as the circlet 

 of bristles in the first pair doubtless indicates a short 

 joint, sunken as it were within the preceding, this pair 

 is likewise three-jointed ; the middle pair appears to 

 be but two-jointed. 



Tlie minute horny tubes are themselves composed 

 of two joints, the basal one thick, the terminal one 

 very slender, and perforated with an orifice of excessive 

 tenuity ; through which the gum oozes at the will of 

 the animal, as an equally attenuated thread. On our 

 Clubiona^ the number of tubes in all the spinnerets is 

 about three hundred ; but in the Garden Spider 

 [Epeira) they exceed a thousand. 



This remarkable multiplicity of the strands with 

 which the aj^parently simple and certainly slender 

 thread of the Spider is composed, has atti"acted the at- 

 tention of those philosophers who seek to discover the 

 reasons of the phenomena they see in nature. The ex- 



