SIS THE SPIDERS. 



below it. But a similar observation was made by Professor 

 E. H. Weber, the famous anatomist aud physiologist, and 

 was published many years ago in Muller's Journal. A spider 

 had stretched its web between two posts standing opposite 

 each other, and had fastened it to a plant below for the third 

 point. But as the attachment below was often broken by 

 the garden work, by passers-by and in other ways, the little 

 animal extricated itself from the difficulty by spinning its 

 web round a little stone, and fastened this to the lower part 

 of its web, swinging freely, and so to draw the web down by 

 its weight instead of fastening it in this direction by a con- 

 necting thread. Carus (" Comp. Psychology, 1866," p. 76,) 

 also made a similar observation. But the most interesting 

 observation on this head is related by J. G. Wood (" Glimpses 

 into Petland,") and repeated by Watson (loc. cit., p. 455). 

 One of my friends, says Wood, was accustomed to grant 

 shelter to a number of garden spiders under a large verandah^ 

 and to watch their habits. One day a sharp storm broke 

 out, and the wind raged so furiously through the* garden, 

 that the spiders suffered damage from it, although sheltered 

 by the verandah. The mainyards of one of these webs, as 

 the sailors would call them, were broken, so that the web was 

 blown hither and thither, like a slack sail in a storm. The 

 spider made no fresh threads, but tried to help itself in 

 another way. It let itself down to the ground by a thread 

 and crawled to a place where lay some splintered pieces of a 

 wooden fence thrown down by the storm. It fastened a 

 thread to one of the bits of wood, turned back with it and 

 hung it with a strong thread to the lower part of its nest, 

 about five feet from the ground. The performance was a 

 wonderful one, for the weight of the wood sufficed to keep 

 the nest tolerably firm, while it was yet light enough to 

 yield to the wind and so prevent further injury. The piece 

 of wood was about two and a-half inches long and as thick 

 as a goose-quill. On the following day a careless servant 

 knocked her head against the wood and it fell down. But 

 in the course of a few hours the spider had found it and 

 brought it back to its place. When the storm ceased, the 

 spider mended her web, broke the supporting thread in two, 

 and let the wood fall to the ground ! 



The spiders are generally very careful about keeping their 

 webs clean, partly because it then better serves its object, 



