90 THE BROOK BOOK 



watch all sides of the web at once, even though 

 she have eight eyes. She must trust to vibration 

 of the threads to tell her where to run when the 

 sticky threads have caught some winged thing. 

 Then, too, when haste is necessary the spider 

 must take the shortest safe route to the spot, else 

 her prey may escape. Not even the owner of the 

 web dare step upon the sticky threads. She must 

 step over them. They are not discriminating, and 

 stick to anything or anybody. To be sure, the 

 spider knows well how to cut the threads and free 

 herself, but the delay might lose her a dinner, 

 besides making a bad tear in the web. So step- 

 ping high, she reaches the nearest radius and run- 

 ning along this and others reaches the scene of 

 the capture and makes the quarry fast. During 

 this interval the sticky thread which first laid hold 

 of the flying creature has done its work well. 

 Besides holding fast to the hairy body, it has 

 yielded to the struggles of the captive just far 

 enough to allow it to become hopelessly entangled 

 in neighboring sticky threads. 



After seeing all these things actually happen, we 

 know the philosophy of the two kinds of threads, 

 but the wonder of it is still with us. We are 

 never weary of testing the webs to see if the 

 spirals are still sticky and elastic, the radii still dry 

 and rigid. And they always are. 



HOW THE ORB-WEB IS SPUN 



During the hot weeks of summer the bridge 

 with the iron railing became an amphitheater. The 



