SPIDERS — WEB-BUILDING, 
207 
the web, then, instead of reaching out towards the fork, the 
spider instantly drops — at the end of a thread, of course. If 
under these conditions the fork is made to touch any part of the 
web, the spider is aware of the fact, and climbs the thread and 
reaches the fork with marvellous rapidity. The spider never 
leaves the centre of the web without a thread along which to 
travel back. If after enticing a spider out we cut this thread 
with a pair of scissors, the spider seems to be unable to get back 
without doing considerable damage to the web, generally gum- 
ming together the sticky parallel threads in groups of three and 
four. 
By means of a tuning-fork a spider may be made to eat 
what it would otherwise avoid. I took a fly that had been 
drowned in paraffin and put it into a spider’s web, and then at- 
tracted the spider by touching the fly with a fork. When the 
spider had come to the conclusion that it was not suitable food, 
and was leaving it, I touched the fly again. This had the same 
effect as before, and as often as the spider began to leave the fly 
1 again touched it, and by this means compelled the spider to 
eat a large portion of the fly. 
The few house-spiders that I have found do not seem to 
appreciate the tuning fork, but retreat into their hiding-places 
as when frightened ; yet the supposed fondness of spiders for 
music must surely have some connection with these observations ; 
and when they come out to listen, is it not that they cannot tell 
which way to proceed ? 
The few observations that I have made are necessarily im- 
perfect, but I send them, as they afford a method which might 
lead a naturalist to notice habits otherwise difficult to observe, 
and so to arrive at conclusions which I in my ignorance of 
natural history must leave to others. 1 
General Habits • 
Coming now to general habits, our attention is claimed 
by the only general habit that is -of interest — namely, that 
of web-building. The instinct of constructing nets for 
the capture of prey occurs in no other class of animals, 
while in spiders it not only attains to an extraordinary 
degree of perfection (so that, in the opinion of some 
geometers, the instinct is not less wonderful in this re-* 
spect than is that displayed by the hive-bee in the con- 
15 
Nature , xxiii., pp. 149-50. 
