MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 



84.3 



The official preparations are : Infusum Rutse, Oleum Rutse, Herba or 

 Folia RutiB. 



ETHELBERT BLATTER, s.j. 

 St. Xaviek's College, Bombay. Jul// 1916. 



No. XXI.— THE CONSTRUCTION OF A SPIDER'S WEB. 



Wandering in my garden the other day, I came across a spider busy 

 building its web ; and the whole process was so ingenious and interesting 

 that I watched it for several minutes, noting the spider's actions and the 

 stages of the progress made. A brief account may interest readers of the 

 Journal. 



The spider was a small one, with a narrow hairless body about 15 to 20 

 mm. long, the colour being a reddish brown and yellow. Its four front legs 

 were long, about three times the length of the body, the third pair short 

 and the hind pair somewhat longer than the third pair. It is a species 

 to be found fairly commonly in gardens in this part of the world, where its 

 delicate webs may often be seen amongst the trees and shrubs. 



I am sorry I did not see the very first stages of web construction as it 

 would have been interesting to know exactly how the first base strands were 

 fixed. When first observed, the web consisted of single threads connecting 

 leaves in a roughly circular form with three or four of what may be called 

 the ' ray ' threads. At the centre was a small collection of specks of some 

 white matter probably of the same material as the web itself. (See Fig. 1.) 



The spider now proceeded to fill in the rest of the ' ray ' webs. This was 

 effected by running along one of the existing rays, fixing material on to 

 one of the leaf connecting threads at such distance from the point of junc- 

 tion as could easily be reached without moving too far from the ' ray ' on 

 which it was, and then running back to the centre along the original ray. 

 The new thread was then attached to some of the white matter at the 

 centre. This was repeated over and over again, the spider working at 

 random over any of the existing ray webs, sometimes along the one just 

 previously attached, at other times along one in the opposite half circle and 

 so on, till the ray webs were complete. The web at this stage was as in 



