404? FOOD OF INSECTS. 



thousand of them. From each of these tubes, consisting 

 of two pieces, the last of which terminates in a point in- 

 finitely fine, proceeds a thread of inconceivable tenuity, 

 which, immediately after issuing from it, unites with all 

 the other threads into one. Hence from each spinner 

 proceeds a compound thread ; and these four threads, at 

 the distance of about one-tenth of an inch from the apex 

 of the spinners, again unite, and form the thread we are 

 accustomed to see, which the spider uses in forming its 

 web. The threads, however, are not all of the same 

 thickness, for Leeuwenhoek observed that some of the 

 tubes were larger than others, and furnished a larger 

 thread. Thus a spider's thread, even spun by the small- 

 est species, and when so fine that it is almost impercep- 

 tible to our senses, is not, as we suppose, a single line, 

 but a rope composed of at least four thousand strands. 

 How astonishing ! But to feel all the wonder of this fact 

 we must follow Leeuwenhoek in one of his calculations 

 on the subject. This renowned microscopic observer 

 found by an accurate estimation that the threads of the 

 minutest spiders, some of which are not larger than a 

 grain of sand, are so fine that four millions of them would 

 not equal in thickness one of the hairs of his beard. Of 

 such tenuity it is utterly beyond the power of the imagi- 

 nation to conceive : the very idea overwhelms our fa- 

 culties, and humbles us under a sense of their imperfec- 



examined a spinner that was not so big as a common grain of sand, 

 and the number of tubes issuing from it was more than a hundred. 

 He affirms that, besides the larger spinners, in the space between 

 them there are four smaller ones, each furnished with organs for 

 spinning threads, but smaller and fewer in number. Latreille speaks 

 only of a thousand spinners from each teat, and of six thousand 

 threads from the whole but he does not enter further into the sub- 

 ject. Nouv. Diet. d'Hist. Nat. ii. 278. 



