SPIDERS. 
73 
evening or morning web is a sight of which I never tire. 
Yet I confess with shame that to this day I do not know 
how she throws the first line from tree to tree. The 
commonly received view is that she first serves out a line 
so thin that it floats on the air till it touches a tree, or 
some other object, and sticks, whereupon the spider draws 
it tight and travels along it with a stouter line. The 
proof for this view is that it must be so, or else how is it ? 
And at one time this argument was enough for me. Then 
I read a paper by a great naturalist who had become a 
chela under Madame Blavatsky, in which he stated that 
the power of suspending the laws of gravitation, which is 
acquired by some men through a long course of self- 
abnegation and austerities, is innate in many birds, 
enabling them to sail through the air without effort. Still 
I scoffed — how easy it is to scoff — but at last I was cured. 
“Namque Diespiter, 
Igni corusco nubila dividens 
Plerumque, per purum tonantes 
Egit equos volucremque curium.” 
The thunderbolt fell in this way. Wandering in the 
Tanna jungles with a scientific friend, I noticed a lovely 
little silvery spider and resolved to specimenize it. In- 
closing it in my hands, I was about to bottle it, when it 
