372 Insect Architecture. 



latter are entirely separated from their bodies, when thus 

 shot out, the threads of the former remain fixed to their 

 anus, as the sun's rays to its body."* A French periodical 

 writer goes a little farther, and says, that spiders have the 

 power of shooting out threads, and directing them at pleasure 

 towards a determined point, judging of the distance and 

 position of the object by some sense of which we are igno- 

 rant.f Kirby also says, that he once observed a small garden 

 spider (Aranea reticulata) "standing midway on a long per- 

 pendicular fixed thread, and an appearance caught " his " eye, 

 of what seemed to be the emission of threads." " I, there- 

 fore," he adds, " moved my arm in the direction in which they 

 apparently proceeded, and, as I had suspected, a floating 

 thread attached itself to my coat, along which the spider 

 crept. As this was connected with the spinners of the spider, 

 it could not have been formed " by breaking a " secondary 

 thread."J Again, in speaking of the gossamer-spider, he 

 says, " it first extends its thigh, shank, and foot, into a right 

 line, and then, elevating its abdomen till it becomes vertical, 

 shoots its thread into the air, and flies off from its station." 



Another distinguished naturalist, Mr. White of Selborne, 

 in speaking of the gossamer-spider, says, " Every day in fine 

 weather in autumn do I see these spiders shooting out their 

 webs, and mounting aloft : they will go off from the finger, 

 if you will take them into your hand. Last summer, one 

 alighted on my book as I was reading in the parlour ; and 

 running to the top of the page, and shooting out a web, took 

 its departure from thence. But what I most wondered at 

 was, that it went off with considerable velocity in a place 

 where no air was stirring ; and I am sure I did not assist it 

 with my breath." || 



Having so often witnessed the thread set afloat in the air 

 by spiders, we can readily conceive the way in which those 

 eminent naturalists were led to suppose it to be ejected by 



* Lister, Hist. Animalia Anglise, 4to. p. 7. 



t Phil. Mag., ii. p. 275. 



J Vol. i. lntr. t p. 417. Ibid., ii. p. 339. 



|| Nat. Hist, of Selborne, vol. i. p. 327. 



