132 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE 



be attached to a wooden platform on which stand a pair 

 of horses weighing 2,100 Ibs., or rather more than a ton. 

 If now the child will go to work and stretch these rubber 

 bands, singly, hooking each one up, as it is stretched, in 

 less than twenty minutes he will have raised the pair of 

 horses one foot ! 



We thus see that the elasticity of the rubber bands 

 enables the child to divide the weight of the horses into 

 350 pieces of six pounds each, and at the rate of a little less 

 than one every three seconds, he lifts all these separate pieces 

 one foot, so that the child easily lifts this enormous weight. 



Each spider's thread acts like one of the elastic rubber 

 bands. Let us suppose that the mouse or the snake weighed 

 half an ounce and that each thread is capable of supporting 

 a grain and a half. The spider would have to connect the 

 mouse with the point from which it was to be suspended 

 with 150 threads, and if the little quadruped was once 

 swung off his feet, he would be powerless. By pulling 

 successively on each thread and shortening it a little, the 

 mouse or snake might be raised to any height within the 

 capacity of the building or structure in which the work was 

 done. So that to those who have ridiculed the story we 

 may justly say: "There are more things in heaven and 

 earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy." 



What object the spider could have had in this work I 

 am unable to see. It may have been a dread of the harm 

 which the mouse or snake might work, or it may have been 

 the hope that the decaying carcass would attract flies which 

 would furnish food for the engineer. I can vouch for the 

 truth of the snake story, however, and the object of this 

 article is to explain and render credible a very extraordinary 

 feat of insect engineering. 



