54 JORNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 
visible just when a sun ray struck the same at a particular angle, 
the little spinners seemed to rise by mere levity, or by an effort of 
will. My brother, who has good eyesight, and who was watching 
these insects most attentively, declares the gossamer spider to be of 
a yellowish colour, and in shape and size like a diminutive sheep 
tick, and that in moving along their wavering threads they plied 
their legs with great rapidity and nimbleness, reminding him of the 
deft motion of the fingers of a skillful human knitter. 
Those marvelously designed webs of the geometer spider are 
most frequently met with earlier in the summer. On one calm and 
bright morning at the beginning of the month of June, 1892, the 
weather for a number of days previously having been quite rainy, 
our roadways, as well as the borders of fields near fences, were 
bestrewn with these ingenious structures ; concentric circles of fine 
thread lines, intersected at symmetrical distances by diverging radii ; 
precision of the angles of junction, and exact mathematical repeti- 
tion of the various parts and patterns, compelled admiration. The 
whole of these fabrications had been produced during the hours of 
darkness, for there was not a vestige of these snares for entrapping 
the two-winged victims of Arachne that one could observe at 
sundown the previous evening. The webs of the more common 
spider of dwellings and barns are woven on a more common-place 
design; but great intelligence and sagacity is shown in their local- 
ization. The innumerable hosts of dipterous insects seek a dimly- 
lighted or darksome retreat wherein to pass the hours of rest, aware 
that when daylight returns their intended prey will dart straight for 
an aperture or knot hole where light is admitted. The discerning 
spiders select invariably such positions across which to stretch the 
gauzy network through which the doomed blueflies and buzzing 
mosquitoes are unable to enforce passage, and so, after violent 
efforts, die and serve as food material to the ingenious and sanguin- 
ary insect weavers. 
On one of the many Indian summer-like days which have been 
interspersed through the present month of November, we were 
impelled to take a six or seven mile walk through the fields and 
woods to a spot where some samples of the wildflower known as the 
closed gentian* were reported to have been noticed. The weather 
*G. Andiewsii. 
