Kew : Snares or Snap-nets of Triangle Spiders. 



203 



and, hanging- therefrom by the first and second pairs of legs and 

 braced away by the third pair, she began to move the fourth 

 pair simultaneously to and from the spinnerets, so as to extract 

 from them an adhesive elastic line ; while doing this, she moved 

 slowly toward the apex, to a point where the inter-radial spaces 

 were narrow enough to permit her to cross to the second radius; 

 this she did, ceasing at the same time to draw out the line, 

 which, as she now returned toward the last completed cross- 

 line, contracted considerably, so that it was nearly of the proper 

 length when the creature attached it to the second radius at 



Fig. 4. — The snare of Hyptiotes cavatus in 

 process of formation. After Wilder. Popular 

 Science Monthly, VI. (1875), p. 640. Fig. 8. 



a point about as far from 

 the last completed cross- 

 line as it had been begun 

 upon the first radius; again 

 turning and making an 

 attachment as before, she 

 repeated the drawing pro- 

 cess so as to carry the 

 elastic line to the third 

 radius, and from this to the 

 fourth radius. The fifth cross-line was thus completed, and the 

 spider, ceasing to draw out line, returned by way of the apex to 

 the first radius, and began to spin a sixth cross-line, and after- 

 wards a seventh, eighth, and ninth, all in the same way and at 

 about the same distances apart. In the earlier more limited 

 observation, the process, as far as it was seen, was identical ; 

 and the observer concludes that the method here indicated is 

 the normal one; he assumes, moreover, quite safely no doubt, 

 that the longer cross-lines (the construction of which he did not 

 see) are put in in the same manner. The process is certainly 



1900 July 2. 



