COMMERCIAL VALUE OF SPIDKtt SILK. 



87 



scientific and popular publications, 1 he communicated many interesting ob- 

 servations, and advocated with much enthusiasm the possibility of estab- 

 lishing a new silk industry from the spinningwork of some of 

 *. re our American spider species. He was led into his investigations 

 ments! while serving as an army surgeon (August, 1863) in -the war 

 against the Southern rebellion, and with especial view to fur- 

 nish suitable employment for the multitude of negro slaves who had been 

 launched upon liberty by the rude force of war, and without the responsi- 

 bility and occupations demanded for prosperous freedmen. While encamped 

 in South Carolina his attention was arrested by the remarkable spinning 

 qualities of a species of Nephila 2 which inhabits the Carolina sea islands 

 and Florida. He invented an ingenious apparatus for reeling off silk from 

 the spinnerets, and better adapted to the long cylindrical abdomen of 

 Nephila than that of Abbe Termeyer, 

 whose method he was quite ignorant of 

 until three years later, but which he 

 then studied and gave to the general 

 public. 



The first specimen from which Pro- 

 fessor Wilder tried to reel silk remained 

 quiet under the process for an hour 

 and a quarter, and until he had ob- 

 tained one hundred and fifty yards of 

 thread ; but its successors were less com- 

 plaisant. He accordingly contrived an 

 apparatus substantially like Termeyer's, 

 which also served the double purpose 

 of keeping the animal in an immovable 

 position, and preventing her from cut- 

 ting the extruding thread with her feet. The contrivance consisted of two 

 large corjcs, a bent hairpin, two large toilet pins, a bit of card, and a bit 

 of lead. One cork served as a body rest, and the bottom was loaded with 

 the lead, one half its top beveled off at an angle of 45, and the card 

 (Fig. 54, c) fixed upon the oblique surface so that its upper edge projected 

 an eighth of an inch. Into the horizontal half of the cork was cut a shal- 

 low groove (g), on either side of which were stuck two pins (p, p) about an 

 inch apart. 



The second cork served as a foil ; it was rounded and smoothed at the 

 smaller end, and a hairpin pushed obliquely through the lower corner of 



KIG. 54. FIG. 55. 



Professor Wilder's apparatus for reeling spider 



silk. 



FIG. 54. The body rest. FIG. 55. The foil cork 

 in place. 



1 Proceed. Amor. Assoc. Advnct. Science, 1865; Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., Oct. 1865; 

 How My New Acquaintances Spin, Atlantic Monthly, August, 18(56; Two Hundred Thousand 

 Spiders, Harper's Magazine, March, 1867 ; The Practical View of Spiders' Silk, The Galaxy 

 (an extinct magazine), July, 186!). 



- See Vol. I., page 146, and figures. 



