FOOD OF INSECTS. 415 



feather, shoot out obliquely in opposite directions other 

 smaller threads, which attached themselves in the still air 

 of a room, without any influence of the wind, to the ob- 

 jects towards which they were directed. He there- 

 fore infers that spiders have the power of shooting out 

 threads and directing them at pleasure towards a de- 

 termined point, judging of the distance and position of 

 the object by some sense of which we are ignorant. 

 Something like this manreuvre I once myself witnessed 

 in a male of the small garden spider (Epeira? reticulata). 

 It was standing midway on a long perpendicular fixed 

 thread, and an appeajance caught my eye of what seemed 

 to be the emission of threads from its projected spinners. 

 I therefore moved my arm in the direction in which they 

 apparently proceeded, and, as I suspected, a floating 

 thread attached itself to my coat, along which the spider 

 crept. As this was connected with the spinners of the 

 spider, it could not have been formed in the same way 

 with the secondary thread of E. Diadema above de- 

 scribed. 



Probably in this case, as in so many others, we be- 

 wilder ourselves by attempting to make nature bend to 

 generalities to which she disdains to submit. Different 

 spiders may lay the foundations of their net in a diffe- 

 rent manner; some on the plan adopted by E. Diadema; 

 others, as Lister long ago conjectured a , by shooting out 

 threads in the mode of the flying species, as in the in- 

 stances recorded by the anonymous observer, and Mr. 

 Knight. Nor is it improbable that the same species has 

 the power of varying its procedures according to cir- 

 cumstances. 



a Hist. Anim. Ang. p. 7. 



