Building the Web 209 



webs, it is much smaller, but it is never absent. 

 For reasons which I will explain in the course of 

 this study, I shall call it, in future, the * resting- 

 floor.' 



The thread now becomes thicker. The first 

 could hardly be seen ; the second is plainly 

 visible. The Spider shifts her position with 

 great slanting strides, turns a few times, moving 

 farther and farther from the centre, fixes her line 

 each time to the spoke which she crosses and at 

 last comes to a stop at the lower edge of the 

 frame. She has described a spiral with coils 

 of rapidly-increasing width. The average dis- 

 tance between the coils, even in the structures of 

 the young Epeirse, is one centimetre.^ 



Let us not be misled by the word * spiral,' 

 which conveys the notion of a curved Une. All 

 curves are banished from the Spiders' work ; 

 nothing is used but the straight line and its 

 combinations. All that is aimed at is a poly- 

 gonal line drawn in a curve as geometry under- 

 stands it. To this polygonal line, a work 

 destined to disappear as the real toils are woven, 

 I will give the name of the * auxiliary spiral.' 



^ "39 inch. — Translator' s Note. 

 O 



