212 ITS COMPOUND STRTTCTTJBE. 



abound, as a friend of mine at Sierra Leone has not 

 unfrequently experienced. In France, gloves and 

 stockings have been fabricaited of their silk, but in 

 this country it is characterised by extreme fragility. 

 Hence, the spider's web is mentioned by Falcon- 

 bridge, when impressing on Hubert, after the death 

 of Arthur, the conviction, that the slightest and most 

 trifling thing would be suflicient for his destruction, 

 if accessory " to this deed of death :" — 



" If thou did'st but consent 

 To this most cruel act, do but despair. 

 And if thou want'st a cord, the smallest thread 

 That ever spider twisted from her womb. 

 Will serve to strangle thee." 



King John, Act IV. Sc. III. 



Slight, and even simple as the threads of the spider 

 may appear, they are not so in reality ; and this 

 forms one of the many examples in which the eye of 

 the Naturalist discerns some concealed elegance or 

 complex mechanism, in things which are daily be- 

 fore " the eyes of men," and yet are never seen as 

 they are seen by him. The obsen'ations of Reaumur 

 and Leeuwenhoek have incontestably shown that a 

 " spider's thread, even spun by the smallest species, 

 and when so fine that it is almost imperceptible to 

 our senses, is not, as we suppose, a single line, but a 

 rope composed of at least four thousand strands!"* 



* Kirby and Spence, vol. i. p. 405. 



