GOSSAMER 



291 



general and frequent. The smaller spiders expel the viscid 

 thread, drawing it out from their bodies by their own 

 movement away from the object to which it at first 

 adhered. When it breaks loose from that support it is 

 carried upwards by air-currents and drawn out from the 

 spinner's body to many yards' length (Fig. 47). It then 

 becomes a " flying-line," 

 and the spider may sail li ov 



away on it or run up 

 it and disappear. The 

 celebrated story of the 

 Indian juggler's perform- 

 ance traditional and 

 even solemnly attested by 

 witnesses, but failing to 



pass the test of photo- FIG. 49. Section through the body of a 



graphy must have been s P ider to show the s P innin g or g ans - 

 suggested by this common, 

 yet wonderful, proceeding 

 of small spiders. The 

 juggler, standing in an 

 open place, surrounded by 

 a ring of spectators, un- 

 coils a rope, 50 feet long, 

 from his waist,and holding 

 one end, throws the other 

 up into the air. The rope, 

 without any support, remains stretched and upright. A 

 small boy now enters the ring and climbs up the rope, 

 draws it up after him, and disappears with it in the upper 

 air ! That is an illusion, but it is precisely what thousands 

 of small spiders are continually doing. A big spider 

 the well-grown female of the common garden spider, for 

 instance, cannot do this her thread is not strong enough, 

 and her weight is too great. But the male of the same 



h, heart connected by four big veins 

 with b, the lung-bosks or air-gills ; f, 

 genital lid ; ov, ovary ; a, the anus ; 

 spn, the three pairs of spinnerets or 

 spinning warts ; t, e, and d, the three 

 kinds of glands producing liquid silk, 

 viz., cylindrical, tree-form, and pyri- 

 form. These are one thousand in 

 number in the common garden spider, 

 and each has its separate spout or 

 spigot standing up on one of the spin- 

 nerets (see next figure). 



