The Life of the Spider 



and what die Spider puts into practice; she is 

 a past mistress of the secrets of rope-building, 

 without serving an apprenticeship. 



One would think that this interrupted and 

 apparently disordered labour must result in a 

 confused piece of work. Wrong: the rays 

 are equidistant and form a beautifully-regular 

 orb. Their number is a characteristic mark 

 of the different species. The Angular Epeira 

 places 2 1 in her web, the Banded Epeira 32, 

 the Silky Epeira 42. These numbers are not 

 absolutely fixed; but the variation is very 

 slight. 



Xow which of us would undertake, off- 

 hand, without mjch preliminary experiment 

 and without measuring-instruments, to divide 

 a circle into a given quantity of sectors of 

 equal width? The Epeira, though weighted 

 with a wallet and tottering on threads shaken 

 by the wind, effect the dehcate division with- 

 out stopping to think. They achieve it by a 

 method which seems mad according to our 

 notions of geometr}-. Out of disorder they 

 evolve order. 



We must not, however, give them more 

 than their due. The angles are only approx- 

 imately equal; they satisfy- the demands of 

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