414- FOOD OF INSECTS. 



the geometric spiders, it would go considerably towards 

 furnishing a solution of the difficulty in question. I ac- 

 cordingly placed the large field spider (A. Diadema) 

 upon a stick about a foot long, set upright in a vessel 

 containing water. After fastening its thread (as all spi- 

 ders do before they move) at the top of the stick, it 

 crept down the side until it felt the water with its fore 

 feet, which seem to serve as antennae : it then immedi- 

 ately swung itself from the stick (which was slightly bent) 

 and climbed up by the thread to the top. This it re- 

 peated perhaps a score times, sometimes creeping down 

 a different part of the stick, but more frequently down 

 the very side it had so often traversed in vain. Wearied 

 with this sameness in its operations, I left the room for 

 some hours. On my return I w r as surprised to find my 

 prisoner escaped, and not a little pleased to discover, on 

 further examination, a thread extended from the top 

 of the stick to a cabinet seven or eight inches distant, 

 which thread had doubtless served as its bridge. Eager 

 to witness the process by which the line was constructed, 

 I replaced the spider in its former position. After fre- 

 quently creeping down and mounting up again as before, 

 at length it let itself drop from the top of the stick, not 

 as before by a single thread, but by two, each distant from 

 the other about the twelfth of an inch, guided as usual 

 by one of its hind feet, and one apparently smaller than 

 the other. When it had suffered itself to descend nearly 

 to the surface of the water, it stopped short, and, by some 

 means which I could not distinctly see, broke off close 

 to the spinners the smallest thread, which still adhering 

 by the other end to the top of the stick floated in the 



