138 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



webbing and the general shape even to the ropes that sling 

 the nets. The bush might be a cabinful of slung hammocks. 

 If you peer more closely as the webs dry, you may see on 

 some webs of rather different shape than the majority strings 

 of minuter drops, marking a certain zig-zag thread that 

 joins the spokes together. It is the glue-thread, most fatal 

 to the winged things, a bird-lime for midges. 



Whatever we think of spiders the webs are worth study. 

 Even many naturalists have a certain repulsion from spiders 

 and the tribe of scorpions which they include. They are 

 held to be ugly. On occasion the females are beyond 

 question cannibals devouring the males. It is not a pretty 

 sight when the poisoned jaws of the spider meet in a trapped 

 victim. The red spider on the beans is one of the foulest 

 plagues, and the harvest bump rather more than a discom- 

 fort. About the spider superstition hangs, though there are 

 pretty as well as unpleasant sayings, as in the favourite 

 French proverb : 



* L'araign^e du matin chagrin, 

 L'araignee du midi plaisir, 

 L'araignee du soir 1'espoir.' 



But the beauty of the spider's web no one questions. It 

 is as undoubted as its ingenuity. The subject was long ago 

 made popular by those most charming and most old-fashioned 

 entomologists, Kirby and Spence, a pair who wrote more 

 than others out of the fund of their own observation. The 

 geometric spider with its vertical web is the most perfect 

 artist. Like the economy of the hive his work is almost too 

 perfect to arouse any affectionate interest. But watch the 

 process of building and interest returns. There is nothing 

 mechanical or automatic about the way the animal sets to 

 work; and when, as a consummation of the web the bird-limed 

 thread is wattled in and out, and the scaffold-pole threads 



