ORDER PULMONARIiE. 391 



and Thomisi. These are principally the large threads which 

 should serve as an attachment to the radii of the web, or those 

 which compose its chain, and which, becoming more heavy in 

 proportion to the degree of moisture, sink, approach towards 

 each other, and end by being formed into pillets. They are 

 often seen to unite near the web commenced by the animal, 

 and where it remains. It is, moreover, probable, that many 

 of these araneides, not having as yet a sufficient provision of 

 silk, confine themselves to throwing out some simple threads 

 to a distance. It is, in my opinion, to some young lycosge, 

 that we must attribute those which are seen in great abund- 

 ance crossing the furrows of ploughed fields, where they reflect 

 the light of the sun. Chemically analyzed, these threads of 

 the virgin present precisely the same characters as the silk of 

 the spiders. They ai'e not therefore formed in the atmosphere, 

 as has been conjectured, for want of proper observations with 

 his own eyes, by a philosopher, whose authority is of great 

 weight, M. le Chevalier de Lamarck. Stockings and gloves 

 have been fabricated with this silk, but such attempts not 

 being susceptible of application on a large scale, and being 

 subject to many difficulties, are more curious than useful. 

 This substance is of much greater importance to the araneides. 

 It is with it that the sedentary species, or those which do not 

 hunt their prey, weave those webs of a tissue more or less com- 

 pact, whose forms and positions vary according to the habits 

 of each, and which are so many snares to take the insects on 

 which they feed. These are scarcely arrested by means of the 

 hooks of their tarsi, when the spider, sometimes placed in the 

 centre of its net-work, or at the bottom of its web, sometimes 

 in a peculiar habitation situated near it, and in one of its 

 angles, runs up, approaches the insect, makes use of all its 

 efforts to strike it with its murderous dart, and distil into the 

 wound a poison which acts most promptly. When the insect 

 opposes too powerful a resistance, or it might be dangerous to 



