316 THE SPIDERS. 



prey. Before all it likes those places where the rays of the 

 sun and dancing midges may be united with the possibility 

 of a hidden retreat for itself, or where a slight draught blows 

 flying insects into its outspread nest, or where ripe fruits 

 attract them. The position must also offer favorable oppo- 

 site points for the attachment of the web itself. People 

 have often puzzled their brains, wondering how spiders, 

 without being able to fly, had managed first to stretch 

 their web through the air between two opposite points. But 

 the little creature succeeds in accomplishing this difficult task 

 in the most various and ingenious ways. It either, when 

 the distance is not too great, throws a moist viscid pellet, 

 joined to a thread, which will stick where it touches ; or 

 hangs itself by a thread in the air and lets itself be driven 

 by the wind to the spot; or crawls there, letting out a thread 

 as it goes, and then pulls it taut when arrived at the desired 

 place ; or floats a number of threads in the air and waits till 

 the wind has thrown them here or there. The main or 

 radial threads which fasten the web possess suAh a high 

 degree of elasticity, that they tighten themselves between 

 two distant points to which the spider has crawled, without 

 it being necessary for the latter to pull them towards itself. 

 When the little artist has once got a single thread at its dis- 

 position, it strengthens this until it is sufficiently strong for 

 it to run backwards and forwards thereupon, and to spin 

 therefrom the web. It behaves, therefore, exactly as did 

 men when they spanned the terrible fall of Niagara with a 

 <'liam-bridge. A paper-kite, such as children play with, 

 was carried by the wind to the opposite side, and the strong 

 cord which held it was used to draw over a heavier rope. 

 The rope served the same purpose in its turn, and from this 

 weak beginning the giant work was completed which now, 

 like a spider's web, spans the flood and joins America to 

 England. 



The long main threads, with the help of which the spider 

 begins and attaches its web, are always the thickest and 

 strongest, while the others, forming the web itself, are con- 

 siderably weaker. Injuries to the web at any spot the 

 spider very quickly repairs, but without keeping to the 

 original plan, and without taking more trouble than is abso- 

 lutely necessary. Most spiders' webs, therefore, if closely 

 looked into are found to be somewhat irregular. When a 



