A BEAST OF PREY 55 



that move them. The other half of the spider 

 consists of the abdomen or stomach, a soft, round 

 bag, quaintly marked like a quail's head, and very 

 squashy in appearance. With this last part of 

 herself, the garden spider spins her snare or web 

 out of the manufactured material of her own 

 body. She spins it of her own digested contents. 

 And as she has frequently to mend the web after 

 various mishaps, which occur in the natural course 

 of business- as when it is broken by the wind, 

 brushed against by passers-by, or torn and 

 mangled by a big fly or wasp you can readily 

 understand that she must eat in proportion ; 

 which is, no doubt, the true cause of her almost 

 incredible voracity. In point of fact, a healthy 

 female spider spends all her time in catching prey 

 and eating it. 



In No. 4 we have a greatly enlarged back view 

 of the spinnerets from which the threads are pro- 

 duced, and a still more enlarged side-view below 

 of the separate little ducts from which the com- 

 ponent strands issue. According to circumstances, 

 she makes her threads simple or compound. The 

 sticky fluid of which they are formed is secreted 

 by powerful glands in the abdomen ; it is then 

 squeezed out through numerous minute tubes, of 

 different calibres, and hardens in most cases when 

 exposed to the air, though the spiral threads with 

 the insect-catching drops on them maintain their 

 viscid nature much longer, so as to gum the flies 

 down, rather than entangle them in meshes, as 

 with the common house-spider. 



