1 2 Woodside. 



fellow floats, climbing along the thread, buoyed up by its 

 silken line. On some fine mornings whole crowds are to be 

 seen thus floating in the air, and so numerous are the trailing 

 lines that they unite and fall so thickly as to be quite con- 

 spicuous, although the resemblance to a slight snow-shower, 

 which has more than once been suggested, is very far- 

 fetched. 



The country people look upon these aerial spiders as a kind 

 of weather indicator, and conclude that, so long as the 

 threads continue to fly high in the air, a continuation of fine 

 weather may be safely anticipated, but that, when they 

 shimmer like sparkling silver near the ground, bad weather 

 may safely be prognosticated. 



Is the spider an insect ? Certainly not, although it is 

 frequently spoken of as such by those who really know 

 better. How, then, does it differ from an insect ? Well, 

 first of all, a spider has eight legs, an insect never more than 

 six, although the caterpillars of butterflies and moths have 

 a number of false legs, or pro-legs, on which they walk, and 

 which are frequently mistaken for true legs. The head and 

 thorax of spiders, too, are united into one piece, whilst those 

 of insects are jointed to each other. But what is still more 

 important is that the spider undergoes no real metamor- 

 phosis. When a spider emerges from an egg, it is exactly 

 like its parent once a spider always a spider, as it were. 

 An insect, on the other hand, undergoes a certain number 

 of changes, and appears under various guises in the course 

 of its life. The butterfly's egg becomes a caterpillar, and 

 this a chrysalis, before finally the butterfly itself appears. 



How does a spider spin its web ? Let us find one, and 

 watch the process. At the end of its body is a gland which 



