I06 EYE SPY 



What is the method of our spider? Ages be- 

 fore the advent of the human engineer he fol- 

 lowed the same tactics which we now see him 

 performing in every meadow, or even at our win- 

 dow-sill, or on the bouquet upon our table, linking 

 flower with flower, window-sill with garden fence, 

 bush with bush, tree with tree, with his glistening 

 suspension-bridge spanning the stream, river, and 

 meadow. This wiry thread that tightens across 

 our face as we ride in our carriage, and leaves its 

 tingling " snap " upon our nose, what is this but 

 the model suspension cable of Arachne strength- 

 ened a hundredfold by the spider which has trav- 

 elled back and forth over its course for hours per- 

 haps, each trip leaving a fresh strand, one extrem- 

 ity being anchored on yonder oak in the meadow 

 and the other on the church steeple? Such a 

 cable twenty feet in length is a common chal- 

 lenge in our walks in the open wood road, even 

 making a perceptible motion among the leaves 

 and bending twigs on either side ere it yields to 

 our advance. And to the walker who cares to in- 

 vestigate, a silken bridge a hundred feet in length 

 is not a very exceptional find. 



This bridge-building is not confined to any par- 

 ticular month or season, nor to any one species of 

 spider. The autumn will afford us the best op- 

 portunity for observation. At that season the 

 spider-egg tufts are turning out their baby spi- 



