The Lime-Snare 243 



The sight is perfectly astounding. Those 

 threads, on the borderland between the visible 

 and the invisible, are very closely twisted twine, 

 similar to the gold cord of our officers' sword- 

 knots. Moreover, they are hollow. The in- 

 finitely slender is a tube, a channel full of a 

 viscous moisture resembling a strong solution 

 of gum arable. I can see a diaphanous trail of 

 this moisture trickling through the broken ends. 

 Under the pressure of the thin glass slide that 

 covers them on the stage of the microscope, 

 the twists lengthen out, become crinkled ribbons, 

 traversed from end to end, through the middle, 

 by a dark streak, which is the empty container. 



The fluid contents must ooze slowly through 

 the side of those tubular threads, rolled into 

 twisted strings, and thus render the network 

 sticky. It is sticky, in fact, and in such a way 

 as to provoke surprise. I bring a fine straw 

 fiat down upon three or four rungs of a sector. 

 However gentle the contact, adhesion is at once 

 established. When I lift the straw, the threads 

 come with it and stretch to twice or three times 

 their length, like a thread of India-rubber. 

 At last, when over-taut, they loosen without 



