The Garden Spiders: Building the Web 



the spinstress approaches the auxiliary diords 

 that have just served as her support. When, 

 in the end, these chords become too close, Aey 

 will have to go; they would impair the sym- 

 metry of the \rork. The Spider, therefore, 

 dutches and holds on to the rungs of a higher 

 row; she pidcs up, one by one, as she goes 

 along, those which are of no more use to her 

 and gathers them into a fine-spun ball at the 

 contact-point of the next spoke. Hence arises 

 a series of silky atoms marking the course of 

 the disappearing spiral. 



The h^t has to fall favourably for us to 

 perceive these specks, the only remains of the 

 ruined auxihary thread. One would take 

 them for grains of dust, if the faultless reg- 

 ularity of their distribution did not remind 

 us of die vanished spiral. They continue, stiU 

 visible, until the final coUapse of the net. 



And die Spider, without a stop of any kind, 

 turns and turns and turns, drawing nearer to 

 the centre and repeating the operation of fix- 

 ing her thread at each spoke which she 

 crosses. A good half-hour, an hour even 

 among the full-grown Spiders, is spent on 

 spiral circles, to the number of about fifty for 

 the web of the Silky Epeira and thirty for 

 343 



