STRENGTH OF WEBS AND POWER OF SPIDERS. 243 
was an inch above the floor. At nine o’clock at night the mouse was 
still alive, but made no sign except when the spider descended and _ bit 
its tail. At this time it was an inch and a half from the floor. 
“Yesterday morning the mouse was dead, and hung three inches from 
the floor. The news of the novel sight soon became circulated, and hun- 
dreds of people visited the stable to witness it. The mouse was a small 
one, measuring about one and a half inches from the point of its nose 
to the root of the tail.” 
Mr. P. C. Cleaver, in whose office the incident occurred, wrote me the 
following statement: “TI have two small rooms in my livery stable, one 
used as an office and the other as a bedroom for my clerk. In 
Mr. Clea- the front room stands against the east wall a writing desk just 
ver’s Tes- ; : ; 
Aichony. tall enough for an ordinary sized man to stand and write on. 
When I first saw it the mouse was under this desk, fastened in 
the spider’s web, with its head down and tail up. Eighteen inches or two 
feet above the mouse was a small spider, whose body was about the size 
of a small grain of sweet sugar corn, certainly not larger than would 
cover the nail of your smallest finger. It was of a dark color, but not black. 
I first saw it about one o’clock P. M., when the toes of the mouse barely 
touched the floor. The spider kept working it up until finally it was three 
or four inches from the floor, and was still alive when I left my stable 
to go home at night. I can give you no information as to the web that 
will satisfy you. It was long enough to reach to the floor, and there were 
a good many strands of it wound in many intricate ways that I do not 
understand. The web was very fine. I left the spider at work that even- 
ing at sunset, with orders that it should not be touched. But the web 
was knocked down that night—by some boys, I think, as a great many 
were there to see the sight, and my clerk thinks it was lost in that way. 
The spider, mouse, and web were all gone when I returned to the stable 
on the following morning.” Mr. Cleaver emphatically declares the impos- 
sibility of any one about his premises having manipulated the mouse in 
any manner to secure its entanglement in the web. “I am as sure,” he 
says, “that the spider caught and raised the mouse three or four inches 
from the floor by himself without the aid of man, as though I had been 
present from first to last.” 
Mr. Hopper, in addition to the printed article, sent me a written 
report of the incident, from which the following quotations are made: 
“As you will see from this account, no one observed the actual 
Mr. Hop- entanglement of the mouse. In a very short time after it was 
she Tes frst observed I myself was informed of it, and went to the 
imony. arg de : 
stable to examine it. This was Monday, August 22d, 1881. 
The office of the stable is a small room. The desk referred to is some- 
thing over three feet high, four feet four inches long, and something 
over two feet wide. From the bottom of the desk to the floor the distance 
