VOL. XLV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 501 



had covered all the cornel-trees, they removed from thence, and covered all the 

 ash, beech, lime, crab-trees, and even weeds, that grew near them, with the 

 same, but a thinner kind of workmanship. 



In travelling from one tree to another, many of them crawled along the 

 ground, and over every thing in the way, still leaving a thread behind, and dis- 

 patching a part of their business as they went to a more convenient surface to 

 finish the rest on. But he imagined some of them took an easier and more in- 

 genious way. He found many of them hanging by their own threads from the 

 most extended branches of the tree. While they were in this situation, a gentlft 

 pufF of wind might, by exciting a pendulous motion, waft them to the next 

 tree. This seems to be the method by which those very minute spiders, whose 

 threads are made visible by the moisture adhering to them in a foggy morning, 

 transport themselves from one bush to another, though destitute of wings, some- 

 times across narrow paths, and even rivulets. 



About the beginning of June the worms retired to rest. Their manner of 

 preparing for, and executing this, was very ingenious and curious. Some of 

 them chose the under sides of the branches, just where they spring from the 

 trunk, that they might be the better defended from the water, which in a 

 shower, flowing down the bark of a tree, is parted by the branches, and sent 

 off on each side. _ 



Here they drew their threads across the angle, made by the trunk and branchy 

 and crossing those again with other threads in a great variety of directions, they 

 afterwards formed a strong tegument on the outside. Within this they placed 

 themselves lengthwise among the threads, and rolling their bodies round, spun 

 themselves into little hammocs of their own web, while in the mean time they 

 shrunk into half their former length. Those hammocs, being suspended by the 

 transverse threads, did not press each other in the least. That they might take 

 up the less room, they lay parallel to each other, and in the most convenient 

 order imaginable. 



Others, still more ingenious than these, fastened their threads to the edges of 

 certain leaves, which doubtless they had saved from their stomachs for this very 

 purpose ; and with that slender cordage pulling in the extremities of the leaves, 

 drew them into a kind of purse, in the inside of which they formed the same 

 kind of work, and laid themselves up in the same manner as above. By this 

 method they saved themselves a labour, which the rest were at the expence of; 

 for the leaf served them very well for an outward defence against the weather,, 

 and a place to fix their transverse threads to. It is probable they laid themselves 

 up in great numbers together, not only because many were necessary to the 



