WEBS OF LABYRINTHINE SPIDERS. 133 



floating line, which, having caught on some convenient hold- 

 fast, she strengthens with additional threads till it forms a 

 strong cable of support, to which from various adjacent points 

 she proceeds to add others, until an irregular frame-work is 

 prepared for the radiated net which is to be hung within it. 

 Using her own limbs as rule and compasses to measure the 

 distance of its spokes and circles, she then constructs her 

 geometric wheel, and when completed, most usually forms its 

 centre with her body, still as death, but all eyes and ears and 

 sentient feet, ready to spring on the first victim that enters 

 her fatal maze. Occasionally she leaves vacant the centre of 

 her net, but it is only to lurk hard by under a leaf or other 

 covert. 



In these wheel-like snares there is extreme diversity of size. 

 Stretching across from tree to tree, we have seen them occupy 

 the breadth of a broad garden walk, and have found others 

 comprised within the narrow area of a single leaf. 



Among the out-door fabrics woven by Spiders, which can 

 hardly fail to attract the eye, however little they may fix atten- 

 tion, are those large white broad-sheets, sloping downwards 

 into tunnels, of which numbers are so frequently seen spread 

 out upon the grass and lower bushes. These webs, of which 

 each serves a single occupant both as a residence and as a snare, 

 are attached by silken ropes to adjacent objects. The sides of the 

 horizontal broad-sheet, sloping obliquely downwards till nearly 

 perpendicular, form towards its centre a cylindrical tunnel, and 



