CHAP. xi. THE PATTENT SPIDER. 211 



breakfast time of the day following, his web was 

 completed. The little artizan was then observed to 

 walk slowly and very sedately all over the newly 

 formed fabric, seemingly with the view of ascertain- 

 ing if all was secure. This done, the aperture was 

 next examined, and with more apparent care than 

 was bestowed upon the rest of the structure. This 

 wonderful mechanical contrivance, which serves at 

 least the fourfold purpose of storehouse, banqueting 

 hall, watch tower, and asylum in times of danger, 

 being found all right, the artificer then took up his 

 station within it, no doubt to await the success of 

 the net which he had spread, and from whence, had 

 fortune proved kind, he would boldly have rushed out 

 to secure his struggling prey. There was, however, no 

 fly to be caught within the case. He was the only 

 living thing in it ; and there the patient creature 

 remained without food, for the space of more than 

 twelve months."* 



* " The superstitious notion, that a spider shut up without food 

 for a year is transformed into a diamond, has probably cost many 

 of these insects their lives ; and if the eradication of ancient pre- 

 judices be as serviceable to science as the discovery of new truths, 

 the poor spiders may console themselves with the honour of mar- 

 tyrdom as justly as the innumerable frogs, who betrayed, amid 

 their tortures, the mystery of galvanism. In this, as in other 

 things, people have obtained a very different and perhaps more 

 important result than they had expected. It appears that though 

 spiders do not turn to diamonds, they can live a long time without 

 food. An insect of this species, inclosed in a box for this rational 

 purpose, was found alive after the poor sufferer had been forgotten 

 for five years." Ackermann's Repository, January 1815. 



