EIGHT-LEGGED FRIENDS. Ill 



it wherever it would ; while Eliza, more architectural in 

 character, preferred- to take her lines personally from 

 point to point, and see herself to their proper fastening. 

 In either case, however, the first thing done was to stretch 

 some eight or ten stout threads from place to place on 

 the outside of the future web, to act as points d'appuy for 

 the remainder of the structure. To these outer threads, 

 which the spiders strengthened so as to bear a consider- 

 able strain by doubling and trebling them, other thinner 

 single threads were then carried radially at irregular 

 distances, like the spokes of a wheel, from a point in the 

 centre, where they were all made fast and connected 

 together. As soon as this radiating framework or 

 scaffolding was finished, like the woof on a loom, the 

 industrious craf tswoman started at the middle, and began 

 the task of putting in the cross-pieces or weft which were 

 to complete and bind together the circular pattern. These 

 she wove round and round in a continuous spiral, setting 

 out at the centre, and keeping on in ever- widening cir- 

 clets, till she arrived at last at the exterior or foundation 

 threads. How she fastened these cross-pieces to the ray- 

 lines I could never quite make out, though I often 

 followed the work closely from inside through the pane of 

 glass with a platyscopic lens; for, strange to say, the 

 spiders were not in the least disturbed by being watched 

 at their work, and never took the slightest notice of 

 anything that went on at the other side of the window. 

 My impression is, however, that she gummed them 

 together, letting them harden into one as they dried ; for 

 the thread itself is always semi-liquid when first exuded. 

 The cross-pieces, we observed from the very beginning, 



