48 THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS LESSONS. 



form of a minute white point immediately under the 

 shell, and in the centre of the circumference. I have a 

 story for you respecting the hatching of spiders, which 

 will illustrate and, I hope, justify the title page of our 

 book, in respect of the " lessons " which our microscopical 

 studies are calculated to teach. 



My friends have inundated me with presents of one 

 kind and another, and I may truly say with Dr. 



Watts 



" Not more than others I deserve, 

 Yet God hath given me more : " 



and, among them, a lady once presentedr me with a spider's 

 nest, taken from its place of concealment in her garden. 

 It was that of the Epeira diadema, the common garden 

 spider. It was taken in the time of winter, months before, 

 in the natural order of hatching, the young would have 

 been produced ; and the bag was cleverly concealed by 

 the mother in a snug nook in the garden fence. I put 

 the nest, or egg-bag, into a small box, which, all the cold 

 winter day, I carried about in my pocket, and, ia the even- 

 ing, I proceeded to examine its contents with my micro- 

 scope. To my surprise, I discovered that the heat of my 

 body had hatched the eggs, and some were broken. I 

 counted one hundred and seventy perfect eggs, most 

 cleverly packed in a bag of silk not your common web, 

 such as the creature spins to entrap insects, but genuine 

 silk of a different sort. I put one of these tiny eggs 

 in my live-box, and observed the nucleus through the 

 thin shell, the diameter of the nucleus being one third 

 the entire egg, the remaining two-thirds beiug the yolk 

 and white, very like that of a fowl. I estimated the size 

 of each egg to be about one-sixtieth of the size of the 

 head of a doll's pin. In a former work * I have told 

 * "Solomon's Little People." 



