PREFACE. 



WITH the completion of the second volume of "American Spiders and 

 their Spinningwork," I feel that I have substantially ended the task which 

 many years ago I proposed to myself. That task, as it lay in my pur- 

 pose, was the description and illustration, in as large detail as possible, of 

 the spinning industry and general habits of true spiders. 



Subsequently, as announced in the first volume of this work, my plan 

 was so far modified as to make the spinningwork and habits of Orbweav- 

 ers the principal theme, and to group around the same the industries of 

 other spiders in such relations and proportions as seemed practicable. In 

 the present volume I have adhered to this modified plan, but less closely 

 than in the preceding one, having made large use of the natural history 

 of other tribes than the Orbitelarise. 



It is probable that this volume will be more interesting than Volume I. 

 both to the scientific and general public. It takes up the life history of 

 spiders, and follows them literally from birth to death, from the cradle to 

 the grave; more than that, it goes beyond the sphere of existing faunal 

 life into the geologic periods, and touches upon the history and destiny of 

 ancestral araneads who lived in the strange surroundings of prehistoric 

 continents, the sites of which are embosomed in the rocks, or, like the 

 amber forests, are now beneath the ocean. The courtship and mating of 

 these solitary creatures ; their maternal skill, devotion, and self sacrifice ; 

 their cocoon life and babyhood ; their youth and old age ; their means of 

 communion with the world around them ; their voyages through the air 

 and dens in the ground ; their allies and enemies ; their fashion of death 

 and its strange disguises these and other facts I have tried to bring be- 

 fore the reader in the following pages. 



Moreover, my studies have necessarily brought me face to face with 

 many of the interesting problems, theories, and speculations of modern 

 science. I have had no pet theory to approve or oppose, and have not 



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