FOOD OF INSECTS. 



345 



forming their concentric circled nets, follow a process very 

 different from that just described, than which, indeed, it is in 

 many respects more curious. As the net is usually fixed in a 

 perpendicular or somewhat oblique direction, in an opening 

 between the leaves of some shrub or plant, it is obvious that 

 round its whole extent will be required lines to which can 

 be attached those ends of the radii that are furthest from the 

 centre. Accordingly the construction of these exterior lines 

 is the spider's first operation. She seems careless about the 

 shape of the area which they enclose, well aware that she can 

 as readily inscribe a circle in a triangle as in a square, and in 

 this respect she is guided by the distance or proximity of the 

 points to which she can attach them.^ She spares no pains, 

 however, to strengthen and keep them in a proper degree of 

 tension. With the former view she composes each line of 

 five or six or even more threads glued together ; and with 

 the latter she fixes to them from different points a numerous 

 and intricate apparatus of smaller threads. Having thus 

 completed the foundations of her snare ^, she proceeds to fill 

 up the outline. Attaching a thread to one of the main lines, 

 she walks along it, guiding it with one of her hind feet that 

 it may not touch in any part and be prematurely glued, and 

 crosses over to the opposite side, where, by applying her 

 spinners, she firmly fixes it. To the middle of this diagonal 

 thread, which is to form the centre of her net, she fixes a 

 second, which in like manner she conveys and fastens to 

 another part of the lines encircling the area. Her work now 

 proceeds rapidly. During the preliminary operations she 



1 It sometimes happens that the end of the lower line of the triangle in which 

 the geometric spiders usually fix their nets, having been attached to a small 

 pebble (or bit of gravel) lying on the ground, this pebble (probably from the 

 spider's tightening its horizontal lines) is drawn up to a considerable height, and 

 swings like a pendulum, as I saw many instances, at first, to my no small sur- 

 prise, in the Giardino Publico of Milan in 1832 (vide Spence in Loudon's 

 Mag. of Nat. Hist. v. 689. ) ; and as has since been observed by W. W. Saunders, 

 Esq. at Wandsworth. (Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i, 127.) In an American news- 

 paper, the Lowell Courier, was an account of a watchmaker having found one 

 morning a gold ring weighing twelve grains, which he had left on his bench, sus- 

 pended an inch high to a spider's thread, by which in the course of a week it 

 was elevated eight inches. 



- I am not certain whether the garden spider does not more frequently 

 form one or two of the principal radii of the net, before she spins the exterior 

 lines. 



