362 ARANEIDiE — TRUE SPIDERS. 



naturally of different colors; particularly white, yellow, gray, 

 sky-blue, and coffee-colored brown. ^ 



A Spider raiser in France, more recently, is said to have 

 tamed eight hundred Spiders, which he kept in a single 

 apartment for their silk."^ 



De Azara states that in Paraguay a Spider forms a 

 spherical cocoon for its eggs, an inch in diameter, of a 

 yellow silk, which the inhabitants spin on account of the 

 permanency of the color.^ 



The ladies of Bermuda make use of the silk of the Silk- 

 Spider, Epeira clavipes, for sewing purposes.* 



The Spider-web fabric has been carried so nearly to trans- 

 parency (in Hindostan) that the Emperor Aureugzebe is said 

 to have reproved his daughter for the indelicacy of her 

 costume, while she wore as many as seven thicknesses of it.^ 



Astronomers employ the strongest thread of Spiders, the 

 one, namely, that supports the web, for the divisions of the 

 micrometer. By its ductility this thread acquires about a 

 fifth of its ordinary length.^ 



Topsel, in his History of Four-footed Beasts and Ser- 

 pents, has the following^ which he .calls an "old and com- 

 mon verse : 



Nos aper auditu prtecellit, Aranea tactu, 

 Vultur odoratu, lynx visu, simia gustu. 



Which may be Englished thus : 



To hear, the boar, to touch, the Spider us excells, 



The lynx to see, the ape to taste, the vulture for the smells." ' 



"It is manifest," says Moufet, "that Spiders are bred of 

 some aereall seeds putrefied, from filth and corruption, be- 

 cause that the newest houses the first day they are whited 

 will have both Spiders and cobwebs in them."^ This theory 

 of generation from putrefaction was a favorite one among 

 the ancient writers; see the history of the Scorpion. 



1 Vide Hist, and Mem. de V Acad. Royale des Sciences, ann. 1710 ; Dis- 

 sert, by M. Bon, Sur Vutilite de la soye des Arraignees, 8vo. Also, 

 Bancroft on Permanent Colors, i, 101 ; and Shaw's Xat. Hist., vi. 481. 



2 Xew Amer. Cyclop. 



3 Voy. dans VAmer. Merid., i. 212. K. and S. Litrod., i. 337. 

 * Naturalist in Bermuda, p. 126. 



5 Atlantic Monthly, .June, 1858, p. 92. 



6 Nouv. Diet, d'llist. Nat., ii. 280. K. and S. Litrod., i. 337, note. 

 ' Hist, of Beasts and Serpents, p. 778. 



8 Thcatr. Ins., p. 235. Topsel's Trans., p. 1072. 



