Spiders. 



367 



posed of two united within the tube of the spinneret, but the 

 spider's thread would appear, from the first view of its five 

 spinnerets, to be quintuple, and in some species which have 

 six teats, so many times more. It is not safe, however, in 

 our interpretations of nature to proceed upon conjecture, 

 however plausible, nor to take anything for granted which we 

 have not actually seen ; since our inferences in such cases 

 are almost certain to be erroneous. If Aristotle, for example, 

 had ever looked narrowly at a spider when spinning, he could 



Garden Spider (Epeira diadema), suspended by a thread proceeding from its spinneret. 



not have fancied, as he does, that the materials which it uses 

 are nothing but wool stripped from its body. On looking, 

 then, with a strong magnifying glass, at the teat-shaped 

 spinnerets of a spider, we perceive them studded with regular 

 rows of minute bristle-like points, about a thousand to each 

 teat, making in all from five to six thousand. These are 

 minute tubes which we may appropriately term spinnerules, 

 as each is connected with the internal reservoirs, and emits a 

 thread of inconceivable fineness. In the following figure, this 



