Spiders. 373 



some animal force acting like a syringe ; but as the state- 

 ment can be completely disproved by experiment, we shall 

 only at present ask, in the words of Swammerdam " how 

 can it be possible that a thread so fine and slender should 

 be shot out with force enough to divide and pass through 

 the air ? is it not rather probable that the air would stop 

 its progress, and so entangle it and fit it to perplex the 

 spider's operations?"""" The opinion, indeed, is equally 

 improbable with another, suggested by Dr. Lister, that the 

 spider can retract her thread within the abdomen, after it 

 has been emitted. f De GeerJ very justly joins Swammer- 

 dam in rejecting both of these fancies, which, in our own 

 earlier observations upon spiders, certainly struck us as 

 plausible and true. There can be no doubt, indeed, that 

 the animal has a voluntary power of permitting the material 

 to escape, or stopping it at pleasure, but this power is not 

 projectile. 



3. " There are many people," says the Abbe de la Pluche, 

 " who believe that the spider flies when they see her pass 

 from branch to branch, and even from one high tree to 

 another; but she transports herself in this manner: she 

 places herself upon the end of a branch, or some projecting 

 body, and there fastens her thread ; after which, with her 

 two hind feet, she squeezes her dugs (spinnerets), and presses 

 out one or more threads of two or three ells in length, which 

 she leaves to float in the air till it be fixed to some particular 

 place." Without pretending to have observed this, Swam- 

 merdam says, " I can easily comprehend how spiders, with- 

 out giving themselves any motion, may, by only compressing 

 their spinnerets, force out a thread, which being driven by 

 the wind, may serve to waft them from one place to 

 another."|| Others, proceeding upon a similar notion, give a 

 rather different account of the matter. " The spider," says 

 Bingley, " fixes one end of a thread to the place where she 

 stands, and then with her hind paws draics out several other 



* Book of Nature, part i. p. 25. f Hist. Anim. Angliae, 4to. 



J Memoires, vol. vii. p. 189. Spectacle de la Nature, vol. i. 



I) Book of Nature, part i. p. 25. 



