196 “The Patient Spider. [CHAP. XI 
was completed. The little artisan was then observed to 
walk slowly and very sedately all over the newly formed 
fabric, seemingly with the view of ascertaining if all was 
secure. This done, the aperture was next examined, and 
with more apparent care than was bestowed upon the rest 
of the structure. This wonderful mechanical contrivance— 
which serves at least the fourfold purpose of store-house, 
banqueting-hall, watch-tower, and asylum in times of dan- 
ger—being found all right, the artificer then took up his 
station within it, no doubt to await the success of the net 
which he had spread, and from whence, had fortune proved 
kind, he would boldly have rushed out to secure his strug- 
gling prey. There was, however, no fly to be caught with- 
in the case. He was the only living thing in it; and there 
the patient creature remained without food for the space 
of more than twelve months.”* 
The notices on natural history, which appeared from time 
to time in the local journal, had the effect of directing gen- 
eral attention to the observation of natural objects; and 
numerous birds, fishes, insects, caterpillars, shells, and plants 
were sent to Edward for examination. : 
In one of his notes he mentions a cinereous shearwa- 
ter (Puffiinus cinereus) found on the beach near Portsoy. 
This led him to give a very vivid account of the stormy 
petrel. Another of the specimens sent to him was a Dy- 
* “The superstitious notion that a spider shut up without food for 
a year is transformed into a diamond has probably cost many of these 
insects their lives; and if the eradication of ancient prejudices be as 
serviceable to science as the discovery of new truths, the poor spiders 
may console themselves with the honor of martyrdom as justly as the 
innumerable frogs, who betrayed, amidst their tortures, the mystery of 
galvanism. In this, as in other things, people have obtained a very 
different and perhaps more important result than they had expected. 
It appears that though spiders do not turn to diamonds, they can live 
a long time without food: An insect of this species, inclosed in a box 
for this rational purpose, was found alive after the poor sufferer had 
been forgotten for five years.”—Ackermann’s Repository, Jan., 1815. 
