34 GLIMPSES OF NATURE. 



window elaborate regular nests or tents, and use the 

 silk-secretion as the lining thereof. The trap-door 

 spider of Southern Europe will be familiar to many 

 readers, and that strength as well as delicacy may be 

 said to rank among the products of the race is easily 

 proved, when we think of the tropical spiders which 

 capture small birds in their "deceitful webs." 



Our spider has been more than successful in her 

 recent foraging expeditions. The autumn weather has 

 chilled the flies, and has rendered them less active and 

 easier prey than before. Madame Spider, from her 

 dwelling-place, rushes along her web at the first in- 

 timation of an unintentional call from the fly world, 

 and speedily her poison apparatus is brought into play 

 for the extinction of the hapless victim. 



The poison fangs of the spider are two curved hooks 

 borne on what naturalists call the mandibles or big 

 jaws. A poison gland supplies the virus, and our 

 spider thus differs materially in this respect from a 

 near relative, the scorpion, which carries its poison 

 apparatus in its tail, and which, if report is to be 

 believed, occasionally takes an insane fancy to commit 

 suicide by plunging its own sting into its own back. 

 Nothing so foolish ever happens in spider-life. 



{Addendum. ^ these pages are passing through the press, 

 an observation has been published which seems to throw doubt 

 on the generally received notion that the spider's thread is com- 

 posed of many different strands. The observation requires 

 confirmation, of course, but if correct, it will not lessen the 

 interest which attaches to the spinning operations.] 



