food or INSECTS. 4*05 



that a space often not much bigger than the pointed end 

 of a pin, is furnished, according to Reaumur*, with a 

 thousand of them. From each of these tubes, consisting 

 of two pieces, the last of which terminates in a point in- 

 finitely fine, proceeds a thread of inconceivable tenuity, 

 which, immediately after issuing from it, unites with all 

 the other threads into one. Hence from each spinner 

 proceeds a compound thread; and these four threads, at 

 the distance of about one-tenth of an inch from the apex 

 of the spinners, again unite, and form the thread we are 

 accustomed to see, which the spider uses in forming its 

 web. The threads, however, are not all of the same 

 thickness, for Leeuwenhoek observed that some of the 

 tubes were larger than others, and furnished a larger 

 thread. Thus a spider's thread, even spun by the small- 

 est species, and when so fine that it is almost impercep- 

 tible to our senses, is not, as we suppose, a single line, 

 but a rope composed of at least four thousand strands. 

 How astonishing ! But to feel all the wonder of this 

 fact we must follow Leeuwenhoek in one of his calcula- 

 tions on the subject. This renoAvned microscopic ob- 

 server found by an accurate estimation that the threads 

 of the minutest spiders, some of which are not larger 



a Reaum Mem. de V Acad. deParis, An. 1 71 3. 21 1 . — De Geer, vii. 187. 

 See also Hoole's Leeuwenhoek, i. 41. — t. %. f. 20-22. Leeuwenhoek 

 examined a spinner that was not so big as a common grain of sand, 

 and the number of tubes issuing from it was more than a hundred. 

 He affirms that, besides the larger spinners, in the space between 

 them there are four smaller ones, each furnished with organs for 

 spinning threads, but smaller and fewer in number. Latreille speaks 

 only of a thousand spinners from each teat, and of six thousand 

 threads from the whole— but he does not enter further into the sub- 

 ject. Nouv. Diet, d'llist. Nat. ii. 278. 



