96 CONVERSATIONS ON 



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" What, Uncle Philip ! A spider make a 

 door with a hinge and a spring to make it 

 shut itself!" 



" Yes, boys ; a spider. Do you think he 

 deserves to be killed for doing it ?" 



" Oh no, no ! But pray tell us all about it, 

 Uncle Philip." 



" This kind of spider, then, boys, I saw in 

 Jamaica, and I saw its house, too. It is called 

 the mason-spider. The nest or house which 

 I saw was a tube made of very hard clay, 

 about six inches long, and an inch across, and 

 was a little bent at one end. The inside of 

 this tube was lined all the way through with 

 a kind of soft silky stuff, something like silk- 

 paper, but stronger, and it was of a yellowish 

 colour ; but the curious part was tjie door. I 

 never saw any thing which an insect had 

 made more strange than that. This door was 

 round, about as large as a quarter of a dollar, 

 and was a little hollowed on the upper side 

 like a saucer ; the inside of it was rounded 

 like the outside of the saucer. It was of the 

 same stuff with the lining of the nest, and 

 seemed to be made of more than a dozen 

 pieces of that lining, put one on the top of an- 

 other : it was shaped so, too, that the inside 



