42 Mr. Turner's Observations on a Spider. 



No. VII. — A fetsd Observations on the curious Mechanical Feats of a 

 small Species of Spider. By the Rev. William Turner. 



Read January 19, 1830. 



Although the subject of this short communication may, at first view, 

 appear trifling, yet, as nothing is really so which is connected with the 

 works of the Creator, whose wisdom is equally conspicuous in His mi- 

 nutest, as in His greatest, works, I trust that no apology will be needed 

 for bringing it before the attention of the Society. 



On the 1st of the present month, I attended, with several other gen- 

 tlemen, the trial of a new Steam Engine, built by Mr. Robert Stephen- 

 son, for the Liverpool Railway ; at the close of which our friend and 

 associate, Mr. Mackreth, observed to me, that though Mr. S. was a great 

 mechanic, he could shew me one still more extraordinary. On calling 

 upon him the next morning, he brought out a tumbler glass, which he 

 had inverted on the table over a sprig of a Laurustinus bush, on which 

 he had observed a very small Spider. Supposing that it might want air, 

 he had slipped under the edge of the glass a small roll of paper. In less 

 than three days the little animal had filled the interior of the glass with mi- 

 nute, almost invisible, threads, by means of which, it had raised the sprig 

 into the middle of the glass ; and, not content with this, had raised also 

 the coil of paper, which by some accident had slipped from under the 

 edge : after this, it laid, upon one of the upper leaves, a large ball of 

 eggs, and having thus completed the ultimate object of its existence, it 

 died, and fell into the meshes of its own web. This glass, with its con- 

 tents, I have now, by Mr. Mackreth's permission, the honour of ex- 

 hibiting to the Society. How this little artist should have accomplished 

 the herculean task of raising a weight several hundred times greater 

 than itself, and for what purpose it should have done this, are questions 



