FOOD OF SPIDERS. 
375 
to believe that the spider subsisted on this matter, as the 
white size was removed by degrees, and in some spots, a 
good way off from the place where the nest was fixed. I am 
aware that spiders can exist for a long time without food, 
even for two or three months, but then this power of ab- 
stinence depends on the temperature of the air. In sum- 
mer they cannot subsist so very long without food, and in 
winter they remain dormant, at least some of the species 
do so. If they want food long, they always decrease in 
size, whilst the spider above mentioned rather increased 
in size, and span a thick nest of about half an inch dia- 
meter. 
In the Annals of Philosophy there is a description of a 
spider''s having consumed a dram of the sulphate of zinc 
in a month, which if I recollect, was represented, in a paper 
which followed, as changed by the process of digestion 
into the carbonate. 
The house-spider draws out a very broad thread com- 
posed of innumerable filaments, but has no power whatever 
of shooting out its thread like the geometric spider. I 
have noticed these spiders when confined in a glass case, 
and the breadth of the thread of the larger spiders could 
not be less than a third of an inch. 
I put a number of them together, and they seemed to 
have no disposition to fight like the Horticolse. They ap- 
peared to me to suck the moisture out of bread softened 
with water, when put beside them ; and in the place where 
T found them, which was a dark wine cellar below the level 
of the ground, I am sure a fly would not enter once in a 
month. I do not mean to say they do not kill and eat 
flies when they happen to get them, but I believe flies are 
not their chief subsistence. Their lurking place made in the 
central corner or apex of the web, appears indeed, as if 
