118 



GENERAL ZOOLOGY 



Like the click-beetles and many others of the Coleoptera, 

 this spider when alarmed has the habit of dropping to the 



ground as if dead. It spins a 

 thread of silk as it drops ; when 



FIG. 59. Garden-Spider and Web. 

 Reduced 



the danger is over it is able by this means 

 to find its way back to the iveb. 



The eggs are laid in the autumn in a sac of silk (Fig. 60), 

 which may contain from five hundred to two thousand eggs. 

 These eggs hatch early in the winter, and the young live in 

 the case through the cold weather, feeding on each other, so 

 that by spring a comparatively small number of spiders 



