SPIDERS — GENERAL INTELLIGENCE. 221 
beneath it. After alluding to this case, Buchner observes 
{loc* city, p. 318"), — 
But a similar observation was made by Professor E. EL 
Weber, the famous anatomist and physiologist, and was pub- 
lished many years ago in Muller’s Journal. A spider had 
stretched its web between two posts standing opposite each 
other, and had fastened it to a plant below for the third point. 
But as the attachment below was often broken by the garden 
work, by passers-by, and in other ways, the little animal extri- 
cated itself from the difficulty by spinning its web round a little 
stone, and fastened this to the lower part of its web, swinging 
freely, and so to draw the web down by its weight instead of 
fastening it in this direction by a connecting thread. Carus 
(Wergl. Psycho.,’ 1866, p. 76) also made a similar observation. 
But the most interesting observation on this head is related 
by J. G. Wood (‘Glimpses into Petland ’), and repeated by 
Watson ( loc . cit., p. 455). One of my frffinds, says Wood, was 
accustomed to grant shelter to a number of garden spiders 
under a large verandah, and to watch their habits. One day a 
sharp storm broke out, and the wind raged so furiously through 
the garden that the spiders suffered damage from it, although 
sheltered by the verandah. The mainyards of one of these w T ebs, 
as the sailors would call them, were broken, so that the web 
was blown hither and thither, like a slack sail in a storm. The 
spider made no fresffi threads, but tried to help itself in another 
way. It let itself dowm to the ground by a thread, and crawled 
to a place where lay some splintered pieces of a wooden fence 
thrown down by the storm. It fastened a thread to one of the 
bits of wood, turned back with it, and hung it with a strong 
thread to the lower part of its nest, about five feet from the 
ground. The performance was a wonderful one, for the weight 
of the wood sufficed to keep the nest tolerably firm, while it was 
yet light enough to yield to the wind, and so prevent further 
injury. The piece of wood was about two and a half inches 
long, and as thick as a goose-quill. On the following day a 
careless servant knocked her head against the wood, and it fell 
down. But in the course of a few hours the spider had found 
it and brought it back to its place. When the storm ceased, 
the spider mended her web, broke the supporting thread in two, 
and let the wood fall to the ground ! 
If so well-observed a fact requires any further confir- 
mation, I may adduce the following account, which is of 
the more value as corroborative evidence from the writer 
