54 



we engage that this little insect shall not only be 

 attracted by the excited electric, but adhere to it like 

 a bur ; for our part we have only to say, that we can- 

 not conjecture what such an experiment was meant 

 to prove, and it bears on nothing we had advanced on 

 the subject. Had the insect been placed on an elec- 

 tric excited by any means, and a conducting substance 

 been presented to the " spinnerets," we should have 

 seen some " method " in it. We are sorry to seem 

 thus severe ; but our animadversions, we honestly con- 

 ceive, are richly merited by the flippant manner in 

 which our name has been dragged into improper and 

 familiar notoriety. A fellow-labourer in the field is 

 entitled to courtesy ; and if his endeavours have been 

 to elicit truth, and he has been assiduous in experi- 

 mental research, his opinions deserve to be treated 

 with deference and respect, especially in so difficult a 

 question, and experiments so subtile and delicate. 

 We quote with much pleasure from a communication 

 to us made by our ingenious friend Mr. Dillon ; and 

 it will be seen he describes a phenomenon precisely 

 similar to that observed by Mr. Bowman : 



" The fact which earliest arrested my notice, I can 

 remember, was the great deposit of moisture upon 

 the webs of certain descriptions of spiders, those, for 

 instance, spun in the hedges or on their banks, and on 

 the grass in the open fields ; and the entire absence of 

 any on the threads of the aeronautic spiders, so long 

 as they remained attached to them : in the former 

 instances the webs were all detached from the living 

 body of the spider. From some experiments which I 

 have made, there is reason to believe that moisture 

 alone, without any other kind of food, is calculated to 

 sustain the life of spiders (some species at least) for a 

 very considerable length of time. 



