MX. SPIDERS. 281 



seemed, because the smell was pleasant to them, it was 

 impossible to say. 



It should be noticed that the scents employed would in 

 all cases be strange and new to the experience of spiders. 

 It might be advisable to repeat the experiments by 

 smearing the rod with the tissues of insects, which form 

 the wonted prey of the spiders, and with the poison of 

 bees and wasps. 



Experiments on hearing were made by using tuning-forks, 

 as had previously been done in England by Mr. Vernon Boys. 

 Mr. Boys found that on sounding an A fork and lightly 

 touching with it any leaf or other support of the web of a 

 garden spider, or any portion of the web itself, the spider, 

 if at the centre of the web, slewed round so as to face the 

 direction of the fork, feeling with its fore feet along which 

 radial thread the vibration travelled. Having become 

 satisfied on this point, it darted along that thread till it 

 reached either the fork itself, or the junction of two or 

 more threads, the right one of which it instantly deter- 

 mined as before. The fork seemed to exercise the same 

 charm as that afforded by the buzzing of a fly ; the spider 

 seized it and embraced it, and never seemed to learn by 

 experience that other things than flies may buz. If the 

 spider were not in the middle of its web, it could not tell 

 which way to go, and had to run to the centre to ascertain 

 which thread was vibrating being thus guided by its 

 sense of touch. Mr. Boys even made a spider eat a con- 

 siderable portion of a fly that had been drowned in 

 paraffin, by making it buz with his tuning-fork. If the 

 tuning-fork was brought near a spider that was waiting 

 in the centre of the web, she instantly dropped to some 

 distance, paying out a silken cord by which she hung 

 suspended. 



