412 food or INSECTS. 



her plan required meditation. But no sooner are the 

 marginal lines of her net firmly stretched, and two or 

 three radii spun from its centre, than she continues her 

 labour so quickly and unremittingly that the eye can 

 scarcely follow her progress. The radii to the number 

 of about twenty, giving the net the appearance of a 

 wheel, are speedily finished. She then proceeds to the 

 centre, quickly turns herself round, and pulls each 

 thread with her feet to ascertain its strength, breaking 

 any one that seems defective and replacing it by another. 

 Next, she glues immediately round the centre five or six 

 small concentric cireles, distant about half a line from 

 each other, and then four or five larger ones, each sepa- 

 rated by a space of half an inch or more. These last 

 serve as a sort of temporary scaffolding to walk over, 

 and to keep the radii properly stretched while she glues 

 to them the concentric circles that are to remain, which 

 she now proceeds to construct. Placing herself at the 

 circumference, and fastening her thread to the end of 

 one of the radii, she walks up that one, towards the 

 centre, to such a distance as to draw the thread from 

 her body of a sufficient length to reach to the next. Then 

 stepping across and conducting the thread with one of 

 her hind feet, she glues it with her spinners to the point 

 in the adjoining radius to which it is to be fixed. This 

 process she repeats until she has filled up nearly the 

 whole space from the circumference to the centre with 

 concentric circles distant from each other about two 

 lines. She always, however, leaves a vacant interval 

 around the smallest first spun circles that are nearest to 

 the centre, but for what end I am unable to conjecture. 



