ig8 The Natui^alist in La Plata. 



coil up his cord to make a bed to lie on, a.nd also 

 use it for binding branches together when build- 

 ing himself a refuge. In a close fight, he would 

 endeavour to entangle an adversary, and at last he 

 would learn to make a snare with it to capture his 

 prey. To all these, and to a hundred other uses, 

 the spider has put his web. And when we see him 

 spread his beautiful geometric snare, held by lines 

 fixed to widely separated points, while he sits con- 

 cealed in his web-lined retreat amongst the leaves 

 where every touch on the far-reaching structure is 

 telegraphed to him by the communicfiting line 

 faithfully as if a nerve had been touched, we must 

 admire the wonderful perfection to which he has 

 attained in the use of his cord. By these means he 

 is able to conquer creatures too swift and strong for 

 him, and make them his prey. When we see him 

 repairing damages, weighting his light fabric in 

 windy weather with pebbles or sticks, as a fisher 

 weights his net, and cutting loose a captive whose 

 great strength threatens the destruction of the web, 

 then we begin to suspect that he has, above his 

 special instinct, a reason that guides, modifies, and 

 in many ways supplements it. It is not, however, 

 only on these great occasions, when the end is 

 sought by unusual means, that spiders show their 

 intelligence ; for even these things might be con- 

 sidered by some as merely parts of one great com- 

 plex instinct; but at all times, in all things, the 

 observer who watches them closely cannot fail to be 

 convinced that they possess a guiding principle 

 which is not mere instinct. What the stick or stone 

 was to primitive man, when he had made the dis- 



