CORRESPONDENCE AND INFORMATION 
7 1 
The Vibrating Spider and Her Web. 
Springdale, Connecticut. 
To the Editor: 
You may recall that a year or so ago 
my boy found a big. gold bedecked 
spider in the garden, and that you gave 
him the creature’s name, sex, habits, 
etc. The other day I found another 
specimen, and for an hour watched her 
performance on the slack rope. Above 
her web were stretched two cables each 
about five feet long. She was perched 
on the middle of one and from her body 
to the upper hawser was a short sec- 
tion of web. By pulling the latter she 
managed to swing back and forth for a 
distance of about six inches. She kept 
doing this actively until I was tired of 
watching her. Now why all this exer- 
tion? Was she out to get the air? Was 
it simply a vagary or was the exercise 
to assist digestion of a fly feast that 
she had just enjoyed, or do you give 
it up as I do? Not very important per- 
haps but Fabre would have worked six 
months to solve the riddle. 
Ambrose H. Horton. 
From a second letter about a week 
later : 
I have it ; the whole performance was 
a coquettish lure for the unfortunate 
mate who after a brief honeymoon was 
destined to be gobbled up by his too 
ardently affectionate spouse. I didn’t 
witness the tragedy but saw the corpus 
— what there was left of it. 
Sprouts of Pitch Pine. 
West Newton, Massachusetts. 
To the Editor : 
On page 31 of the August issue Mr. 
William H. Huse states that the pitch 
pine, Pinus rigida, “is remarkable be- 
cause of its ability to send up sprouts 
from its stumps.” I should like to in- 
quire if Mr. Huse has seen these shoots 
acquire any larger size — in other words, 
if they produce saplings. 
I have a wood lot of some twenty 
acres of pitch pines at Centerville, on 
Cape Cod, and have made a study of 
this pine, but I find that shoots will 
often start from newly cut trees, yet 
these are abnormal in regard to the 
leaves, which are not in groups of three, 
as is usual, but are single, as are the 
young of all pines that I have seen in 
their first year. The new shoots of 
stumps that I have observed soon die, 
seldom if ever surviving over the first 
winter. 
It would seem that the young pines 
when in extreme youth assume an an- 
cestral method of leaf growth, and it is 
interesting to note that the trees when 
in a weakened, pathological condition 
also revert to the same primitive 
method of leaf production. 
C. J. Maynard. 
An Astonishing Experiment and 
Statement. 
BY F. H. SIDNEY, WAKEFIELD, MASS. 
Crickets are very fond of their 
homes, and prefer to stay near where 
they were born. If a cricket is carried 
away it will use its wings to fly back. 
I have taken crickets from my gar- 
den, pasted a small bit of paper on 
their backs to identify them, then car- 
ried them five miles away in an auto- 
mobile and turned them loose. The very 
next day I found the marked crickets 
in their accustomed place in my garden. 
People in Spain are very fond of the 
cricket’s song, and they keep crickets 
in tiny cages in order to hear their 
cheery song. Only one crickets is kept 
in a cage, for two crickets shut up to- 
gether will fight until one is dead, for 
crickets always live alone. Spanish 
children fish for crickets by tying an 
ant to a thread and dropping it into the 
cricket’s hole. The cricket fastens on 
to the ant and is pulled up like a fish. 
COMMENT BY DR. LUTZ. 
This observation is rather unusual. 
Very few of the crickets that I would 
expect to occur in Massachusetts have 
wings sufficiently developed to enable 
them to fly five feet, much less five 
miles. In every generation, however, 
there are a few individuals that have 
long wings and can fly but I would not 
expect them to fly five miles in any 
length of time, much less in one even- 
ing, and still less back to the exact 
place from which they started. 
On the other hand, insects are won- 
derful things and we are always finding 
out new wonders. The crickets that 
can fly do fly and are frequently at- 
tracted to lights ; also the male crickets 
use their front wings to chirp with. — 
Frank E. Lutz, Curator, Department of 
Entomology of the American Museum 
of Natural History, New York City. 
Will other readers please experiment 
on this? — Ed. 
