138 



NATUKAL SCIENCE NEWS. 



ished. How it is that a warm 

 blooded animal, used to the most 

 active and stirring life can sudden- 

 ly suspend its life forces and lay 

 for months in a comatose condi- 

 tion, is a mystery to me. 



The one thing that I wish most to 

 notice in this paper is the physiolo- 

 gical changes attendant upon this 

 voluntary stay of the ordinary ac- 

 tivities of the animal economy. 



Ir ordinary sleep the different 

 organs do not suspend their action, 

 but perform their usual functions 

 as in daily action. The stomach 

 digests food;the kidneys extract the 

 waste elements from the blood ;the 

 villi of the intestines absorb pabu- 

 lum for the nourishment of the 

 body, and there is a general reno- 

 vation and building up of the whole 

 system. In hibernation it is quite 

 the reverse, for, save respiration 

 and circulation all other functions 

 are practically suspended. The 

 last meal that the animal eats, in 

 November or December as the case 

 may be, will be found in the stom- 

 ach the following March. The 

 kidneys do not secrete any mater- 

 ial from the blood in this same 

 time, because the bladder of an an- 

 imal, killed after months of hiber- 

 nation, will be found almost emp- 

 ty. The bowels do not move eith- 

 er, unless it be about Feb. 14th, 

 when the male animals come out 

 for a few moments, seemingly to 

 forecast the weather. At this date 

 the female, if a bear, has cubs 

 some ten days old and never leaves 

 her den until about April 1st. An- 

 imals never soil their dens under 

 any circumstance. 



When the animal retires to his 

 den in the fall he is in good flesh 

 and muscular, that is, the muscu- 

 lar tissue is in excess of the adi- 

 pose. One would very naturally 

 suppose that the animal after a fast 

 of four or more months would be 

 very lean and poor; but such is 

 not the case, for when the animal 

 first leaves his den in the spring, 

 there is more fat wrapped within 

 his wooly coat than when he enter- 

 ed it in the fall. [?— Ed.] This 

 comes about not by any increase in 

 the weight of the animal, but by a 

 fatty degeneration of the muscular 

 tissue, so that when the animal 

 comes out in the spring he has much 

 fat and little muscle. Should you 

 kill this animal ten days or two 

 weeks after his leaving the den you 

 would find him as poor as the pro- 

 verbial Job's turkey. A few days 

 diarrhoea brought on by eating fresh 

 clover or other green grass very 

 soon runs the fat off. 



Nature is a wise provider for the 



wants of her offspring. It is a 

 well established fact that no ani- 

 mal can starve to death so long as 

 there is fat to supply the system 

 its necessary fuel. The animal 

 goes into its den with a supply of 

 fat covering the body; the excre- 

 tory organs all cease action, and 

 the economy fearing a scarcity be- 

 gins at once to transform the pro- 

 teid material of the muscular tis- 

 sue into oil. How this is done no 

 one knows, but that it is done I 

 am most certain. 



It is very evident to me that this 

 fatty degeneration is brought about 

 solely by a total cessation of phy- 

 sical and nervous energy. When 

 both the muscles and nerves cease 

 from work there is no broken down 

 material to remove, consequently 

 the excretory organs have nothing 

 to do, and the extra muscular tis- 

 sue developed during the summer's 

 activity, left to itself with nothing 

 to do very readily degenerates in- 

 to fat. 



G. W. Harvey, M. D., 



Williams, A. T. 



Spider Farming. 



Although entomologists have of- 

 ten raised spiders for purposes of 

 scientific observation and investi- 

 gation, spider raising as a money 

 making industry is something rath- 

 er novel. One has only to go four 

 miles from Philadelphia, on the 

 old Lancaster pike, says a Phila- 

 delphia paper, and ask for the 

 farm of Pierre Grantaire to see 

 what can be found nowhere else in 

 this country, and abroad only in a 

 little French village in the depart- 

 ment of the Loire. 



Pierre Grantaire furnishes spi- 

 ders at so much per hundred for 

 distribution in the wine vaults of 

 merchants and the nouveaux rich- 

 es. His trade is chiefly with the 

 wholesale merchant, who is able to 

 stock a cellar with new, shining, 

 freshly labeled bottles, and in three 

 months see them veiled with film)' 

 cobwebs, so that the effect of twen- 

 ty years of storage is secured at a 

 small cost. The effect upon a cus- 

 tomer can be imagined, and is 

 hardly to be measured in dollars 

 and cents. It is a trifling matter 

 to cover the bins with dust, but to 

 cover them with cobwebs spun 

 from cork to cork, and that drape 

 the neck like delicate lace, the seal 

 of years of slow mellowing, that is 

 a different matter. The walls of 

 Mr. Grantaire's spider house are 

 covered with wire squares from six 

 inches to a foot across, and behind 



these screens the walls are covered 

 with rough planking. There are 

 cracks between the boards apparent- 

 ly lef twith design, and their weather- 

 beaten surfaces are dotted with 

 knot holes and splintered crevices. 

 Long tables running the length of 

 the room are covered with small 

 wire frames, wooden boxes and 

 glass jars. All of these wires in 

 the room are covered with patterns 

 of lace drapery, in the geometrical 

 outlines fashioned by the spider 

 artists. The sunlight streaming 

 through the door shows the room 

 hung with curtains of elfin-woven 

 lace-work. 



It is not all kinds of spiders 

 that make webs suitable for the 

 purposes of the wine merchant, 

 and those selected by Mr. Gran- 

 taire are species that weave fine, 

 large ones of lines and circles. 

 They are the only webs that look 

 artistic in the wine cellar or on the 

 bottles. The spiders that weave 

 these are principally the Eperia 

 vulgaris and NepJiila plumipes. 



When Mr. Grantaire has an or- 

 der from a wine merchant, he plac- 

 es the spiders in small .paper box- 

 es, a pair in a box, and ships them 

 in a crate with many holes for the 

 ingress of air. The price asked, 

 ten dollars a hundred, well repays 

 the wine merchant, who, at an ex- 

 penditure of forty or fifty dollars, 

 may sell his stock of wine for a 

 thousand or more dollars above 

 what he could have obtained for it 

 before the spiders dressed his bot- 

 tles in the robes of long ago. Mr. 

 Grantaire has on hand, at a time, 

 10,000 spiders, old and young, the 

 eggs of some of which, the choic- 

 est, he obtains from France. 



When the mother spider wishes 

 to lay her eggs, she makes a small 

 web in a broad crack, then she 

 lays say fifty eggs, which she cov- 

 ers with a soft silk cocoon. In 

 two weeks (or longer in winter) 

 the eggs begin to hatch, an opera- 

 tion that takes one or two days. 

 The egg shells crack off in flakes, 

 and the yonng spiders have a 

 struggle to emerge. Then they 

 begin to grow, and in a week look 

 like spiders. They often moult, 

 and shed their skins like snakes. 

 The brood has to be separated at 

 a tender age, else the members of 

 the family would devour each oth- 

 er until only one was left. 



Excavations in the interior of 

 the Coliseum at Rome, which 

 were abandoned in 1878, are soon 

 to be begun again, by order of Dr. 

 Baccelli, minister of public in- 

 struction. 



