SPIDEBS AND MITES. 215 



be instantly converted from a fluid into a strong rope, 

 or it would be of no use for the purposes it is intended to 

 fulfil. Let a fly, for example, become entangled in the 

 meshes of a Spider's web ; no time is to be lost ; the 

 struggling victim, by every effort to escape, is tearing 

 the meshes that entangle it, and would soon succeed in 

 breaking loose did not its lurking destroyer at once rush 

 out to complete the capture and save its net, spun with so 

 much labour, from ruin. With the rapidity of thought, it 

 darts upon its prey, and before the eye of the spectator 

 can comprehend the manoeuvre, the poor fly is swathed in 

 silken bands, until it is as incapable of moving as an 

 Egyptian mummy. To allow the Spider to perform such 

 a feat as this, its thread must evidently be instantaneously 

 placed at its disposal, which would have been impossible 

 had it been a single cord, but being subdivided into 

 numerous filaments,- so attenuated as we have seen them 

 to be, "there is no time lost in the drying ; from being 

 fluid they are at once converted into a solid rope, ready 

 for immediate service." * 



No doubt you have often admired the exquisite regu- 

 larity of those Spiders' webs which are called geometric ; 

 that .of our abundant Garden Spider, for instance. You 

 have observed the cables which stretch from wall to wall, 

 or from bush to bush, in various directions, to form the 

 scaffolding, on which the net is afterwards to be woven ; 

 then you have marked the straight lines, like the spokes 

 of a wheel, that radiate from the centre to various points 

 of these outwork cables, and finally the spiral thread that 

 circles again and again round the radii, till an exquisite 

 net of many meshes is formed. 



But possibly you are not aware that these lines are 



formed of two quite distinct sorts of silk. It has been 



shown that the cables and radii are perfectly unadhesive, 



while the concentric or spiral circles are extremely viscid. 



* " Nat. Hist, of Anim.," ii. 339. 



