SPINNING MITES. 105 



CASE to suppose that it was produced by them, and he remained thus 

 several years without being able to resolve this entomological pro- 

 blem. At length, during the autumn of 1830, which was remark- 

 able for the long continuance of fine weather, these white webs 

 being still more numerous than usual, he again took his place of ob- 

 server. He then perceived upon this web a kind of red dust, some- 

 times disseminated, sometimes gathered together, or agglomerated. 

 He at first took this for inert or excremental molecules. But the 

 magnifying glass came happily to dissipate this illusion, and crown 

 his wishes, for it showed him that these red dots were living. 

 The extreme abundance of these animalcules, for there were 

 thousands of them, made him presume that they were the makers 

 of the tissue which supported them, and his presumption was soon 

 changed into certainty. He shut up in cornets of paper crowds 

 of these little Arachnides, in order to examine them in the silence 

 of the study by the aid of the microscope. Scarcely had he 

 placed them in a little glass bottle, than they began to separate, 

 to scatter, to examine their new habitation, and at the end of two 

 hours, there were already some hundreds of these workers estab- 

 lished on a web, and working under his eyes with ardour. Some 

 were placed under the web in such a way as to present the under 

 side of the body to the observer, others were above it ; some 

 went down, some came up ; he often saw them cross each other 

 obliquely, but far from running against each other, from entangling 

 themselves, they mutually yielded the way, so that no gap, no 

 fault in the fabrication of the web resulted. 



He found that the tissue fabricated by these myriads of pigmy 

 weavers was not a net or thread, but a fine and well-joined web. 

 The threads of this are a little oblique to the horizon, and cross 

 at very pointed angles. When their cloth is finished, they keep 

 themselves generally under it, as if to put themselves in sJielter 

 from the direct influence of surrounding bodies. He satisfied 

 himself that the thread which they emit comes from underneath 

 the abdomen, and probably from imperceptible papillae. But he 



