468 



AMERICAN SPIDERS AND THEIR SPINNINGWOBK. 



Embalm 

 ing- 



Amiber 

 Insects. 



female form (Fig. 400) and the male form (Fig. 401), shows a wide diverg- 

 ence from any spider with which I am acquainted. Modern spiders cer- 

 tainly present some forms that are equally remarkable in their divergence 

 from the typical spider facies. But this genus appears to stand by itself, 

 without any modern representative, and is probably extinct. 



As the climate of tlie amber forests covering the shores of the Tertiary 

 Amber Bay, and the islands grouped within it, was that of a semitropical 

 rather than of a temperate zone, we may conceive these endless 

 woods of amber pine exuding streams of resin under a hot sum- 

 mer sun. The liquid product freely flowed down the trunks of 

 the trees and accumulated in great lumps around the roots, mass 

 mingling M'ith mass, as the trees stood close together in the for- 

 ests, until in the course of time the soil was surcharged with solidified 



resin. In that period, as 

 now, insects frequented 

 trees, and Avere continu- 

 ally hovering around the 

 trunks, alighting thereon, 

 creeping along the bark. 

 Then, too, any aromatic 

 substance dropping from 

 the branches upon the 

 ground must have at- 

 tracted swarms of them, 

 as I have often seen in 

 American forests. 



We have thus the 

 conditions under which 

 the amber fossils were 

 entombed ; for S^'^jngle 

 touch of an insect upon 

 the liquid resin would at 

 once arrest its flight, and tlie soft, flowing stream would instantly imbed 

 it. For the most part this enclosure seems to have been painless ; at least, 

 the attitude of the included insects and spiders is such as to suggest the 

 absence of all violent struggle. At any rate, their limbs soon sank into a 

 position of repose, and they are thus preserved to us. 



Where insects are, there spiders resort in search of their natural food. 

 Lurking upon the branches, crouching, walking, jumping upon the trunks, 

 spinning ^heir webs in the grasses at the foot of trees, and 

 Spiders stringing them from bough to bough, it is not strange that, in 

 ,^' , the ordinary course of life, they too found sepulture within the 

 li(juid runlets and masses of resin, and thus have been preserved 

 to us, along with the insects whose lives tliey sought, imbedded in amber. 



Fig. 400. The fossil spider Archea paradoxa ; female. (After 

 Berendt.) Natural size shown in the circle. 



