SPIDERS. 369 



be useful, this sort of net must be clean. Upon ob- 

 serving it a little closely, however, we perceived that 

 she was not constructing a net, but dressing up an 

 old one ; though not, we must think, to save trouble, 

 so much as an expenditure of material. Some of the 

 lines she dexterously stripped of the flakes of soot 

 adhering to them ; but in the greater number, finding 

 that she could not get them sufficiently clean, she 

 broke them quite oil', bundled them up and tossed 

 them over. We counted five of these packets of 

 rubbish which she thus threw away, though there 

 must have been many more, as it was some time 

 before we discovered the manoeuvre, the packets 

 being so small as not to be readily perceived, except 

 when placed between the eye and the light. When 

 she had cleared off all the sooted lines, she began to 

 replace them in the usual way ; but the arrival of the 

 boat at Mentz put an end to our observations.* 

 Bloomfield, the poet, having observed the disappear- 

 ance of these bits of ravelled web, imagined that the 

 spider swallowed them ; and even says that he 

 observed a garden-spider moisten the pellets before 

 swallowing them !t Dr. Lister, as we have already 

 seen, thought the spider retracted the threads within 

 the abdomen. 



* J. R. f Kemaiiu, ii. 6U 



T 3 



