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The use of these combs is for cleaning itself and its web, 

 the Spider being a most tidy creature. It has been seen 

 to spend an hour or more in scraping the delicate threads 

 of its web, when dust or soot had collected on them ; and 

 if they were too thoroughly incrusted with dirt, these little 

 claws broke the thread, rolled it up, and threw it away. 



The combs have from fifteen to seventeen teeth, necessary 

 for the swiftly running Spider when crossing the fragile 

 web or twisting the silken bands that form its dwelling or 

 its snare. 



Whoever has patiently watched a Garden or a House 

 Spider spinning its web, will have noticed how with these 

 claws it shakes and tries the strength of each supporting 

 line, and is able to cling to it or roll it up by means of these 

 handy little combs, as well as to regulate the issue of the 

 threads from the spinnarets, as it were reeling it off. 



These are not always well prepared. They are difficult 

 to keep in position, but you could see them well by catching 

 a good-sized Spider, and examining it as an opaque object. 

 At the end of the abdomen you will find four or five teats 

 or spinnarets, pierced with an immense number of minute 

 holes, from which a viscid fluid, a kind of glue, exudes at 

 the will of the animal, and is drawn out as a fine thread. In 

 reality, each of those fine lines which we can scarcely see is 

 composed of thousands of threadlets, for there are often 

 1000 orifices in each teat. The fluid, first uniting from all 

 these in one twist, descends about the tenth of an inch, and 

 then twining with the three or four others, it becomes a 

 cable in structure and in strength. 



The formation of the web would be too long a process to 

 describe here. Only one fact I add; which is, that the 

 Spider makes two different kinds of thread, and every web 

 is fashioned of these different materials. 



Take one of those common garden geometric webs, and 

 throw a little fine dust against it. Look closely ; you will 

 see that the dust adheres to the cross lines which form the 

 circles, but not to the radii or supporting lines. This is 



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