72 



Arjnitt : OhseTvations on Spiders at Rydal, 



of the fruit of his night-labour, and must often go hungry 

 through the day. He is sometimes wanted himself, too, as well 

 as his web. I have seen the Great Titmouse, in a season when 

 caterpillars were scarce and nestlings growing, look so earnestly 

 into an Amaurohiits web that he was clearly wanting its owner ; 

 and the Blue Titmouse, in a season of dearth, will carry in the 

 spider to its nestlings. Again, I have known the Robin feed its 

 young just out of nest in late July very largely on this spider. 

 The Robin is not a good acrobat like the Titmouse, and its 

 tactics were these : it flew to the gutter of the porch as a 

 vantage port, cocked its eye upon the upper house-face, flew 

 up then to a selected spot, secured its prey, and carried 

 it to the youngster hidden for convenience among the plants 

 below. This action it repeated again and again, on several days. 



The common orb-weaver of the garden — equally common, too, 

 on herbage and wall outside — is Meta segmentata. In April its 

 first web may be seen, and young members of the tribe continue 

 to spin well on into December, if the weather be fair and mild. 

 The web has an open centre or hub (a distinguishing feature of 

 the Mefas), then a few fine concentric lines spun upon the 

 spokes, which are used as a framework for itself to hang upon ; 

 then a space where the spokes are left free ; and finally the 

 wide concentric lines which form the catching-ground of its 

 prey. This spider, like some others, is tempted sometimes by 

 a fair breeze to spin in the middle of the day. It is probable 

 that the breeze assists the spinner in bridging spaces with the 

 first lines that form the foundation, for then a thread emitted 

 from its body will catch on some near object and serve as 

 a ladder. A captured spider once remained stationary on the 

 rim of a tumbler, holding the end of the abdomen upwards, 

 until it turned and by a perfectly straight line ascended to the 

 hat-brim of a person seated near. This it must have done by 

 a line it had ejected which had caught that object ; and thus, no 

 doubt, do spiders often attain their first cross-ropes. The Meta, 

 having secured the foundation and a few cross-lines, proceeds 

 to the radiating spokes by crawling from the centre along one 

 already achieved by this method, dragging a new line behind it. 

 It then runs for a short distance along the outer foundation line, 

 and attaches the dragging line to it ; next it swings back to the 

 centre on this line (which bows wide) and tightens it there. 

 After making a sufficient number of spokes and pausing' awhile, 

 it creeps slowly round and round from the centre, attaching its 

 line to every spoke it passes. When the few central concentric 



Naturalist, 



