OCTOBER 



53 



understood in comparatively recent years. Everyone 

 knows now that the gossamer which covers our com- 

 mons is spun by spiders. In old days all sorts of fairy 

 traditions hung about it, as it was quite unlike the web 

 of other spiders. The lecturer said that spiders place 

 themselves with their face to the gentle breeze. This 

 carries the thin thread they have power to eject, with its 

 glutinous end, into the air till it reaches some branch or 

 stone or corner of leaf, to which it adheres instantly. 

 When this happens, the spider turns quickly round and 

 pulls, like any British tar, with his two front claws till 

 the fairy rope is tight. Then he fixes it and can travel 

 along it, and that is the first stage in the 'weaving,' as 

 the old language puts it, of his beautiful web. Spiders 

 belong to a kingdom ruled by women, and the female 

 eats up the male if she finds him troublesome and 

 unsatisfactory. There is a very good book about British 

 spiders by E. F. Staveley (L. Reeve & Co.), which would 

 tell all that anyone might want to know about these 

 insects. The first page illustrates spiders' heads, with 

 the varying numbers of eyes the different kinds possess. 

 'Gleanings in Natural History,' by Edward Jesse, is 

 a book I can indeed recommend to all lovers of natural 

 history. The first edition is dated ' Hampton Court, 

 1842.' For all of us who live near Hampton Court the 

 book has a double interest, as he was Surveyor of Her 

 Majesty's Parks and Palaces, and lived there, and many 

 of his anecdotes are connected with the neighbourhood. 

 His opening words are : 'One of the chief objects I had 

 in writing the following pages was to portray the 

 character of animals, and to endeavour to excite more 

 kindly feelings towards them.' It is a kind of half-way 

 book between Gilbert White and the scientific writings 

 of the present day; and all natural instincts and facts 

 are accounted for in what the most ignorant, since the 



