1879.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
473 
solid. Those who have these tables can draw them, and 
those who have other kinds can draw their own. If it is 
preferred, draw a stand ; it will answer our purpose as 
well. First, draw the top, making it of any shape re¬ 
quired by the position from whieh it is seen. In the next 
place put on the legs, by drawing the front or facing cor¬ 
ners, remembering that, no matter what position yon 
Fig. 5. —THE TABLE. 
may be in, the legs must run straight up and down—be 
perpendicular—and all of the same length—at least in 
any ordinary table, like the one shown in the engraving. 
The side pieces are next put on, and the table is finished 
by drawing the inner side of the front legs, and the por¬ 
tions of the back ones that may be in sight. The dotted 
line joining the feet of the legs should form a rectangle 
similar to the top of the table. After having drawn the 
table in one position, draw it as seen from another part 
of the room; or the table can be turned around until the 
position suits—just as the artist twists your head and 
body this way and that way, to get the best position. 
There is much to be learned in # sketching so common a. 
thing as a table, and at first some patience may be re-' 
quired—there is much in getting accustomed to the use 
of the pencil, and such objects are better to begin with 
than animals or plants. When the table has been made, 
of course some chairs will be the next in order. It may 
not be as easy to find a chair with outlines that are all 
stright lines—such chairs are not so common as in the 
days of our grandfathers. Those who have doll chairs 
may be provided for. To draw a chair like the one 
shown in figure 6, is, with the practice we have had, 
mostly a matter of time. Begin with the seat, and then 
the legs, just as in the table, and finish the back the last 
thing. How many get it right the first time, and do not 
have to write under the picture “A Chair'' that others 
may know what it is ? A great many, we suspect. Now 
turn the chair around, and try again, after which it can 
be turned down on the side. When it has been taken in 
various positions, put the chair out of sight, and draw it 
from memory. Bridges, houses, barns, etc., are drawn 
before they are built, and sometimes every piece is put 
together, on paper , by the architect, while the wood is 
still standing in the forest, and the iron is in the mine. 
Spiders, Spinnerets, and Cobwebs. 
At the very outset we feel that there is a great dislike 
for Spiders. The very word seems to have something in 
it that makes 
some people 
“ crawl all 
over” ; and, 
knowing this, 
we fear that 
it must be up¬ 
hill work to 
make such a 
subject inter¬ 
esting to our 
young read 
ers. Within 
the past year 
a neat little 
book has been 
published on 
Spiders, 
y (“ The Struc- 
1 ''s' ture and Hab- 
^ '' its of Spi¬ 
ders.” by J. 
H. Emerton, 
Salem.Mas?.); 
and we shall 
draw upon 
this for facts and illustrations. The Spi ders form a fam ily 
of animals somewhat closely related to insects , the beetles, 
butterflies, etc., on the one side, and crabs and lobsters 
on the other. SpiderS have eight legs—enough for two 
Fig. 1.—GRASS SPIDER. 
Fig. 6.—STRAIGHT-BACK CHAIR. 
cows or four boys—and the same number of eyes. How 
strange a cow would look with eight eyes, and what a ter¬ 
rible thing to see an owl would be if we should increase 
its great “ lookers ” four-fold 1 In figure 1 is shown the 
common Grass Spider, which constructs such beautiful 
cobwebs upon the wheat stubble, and over the pastures 
which are so plainly seen on a damp morning in autumn, 
and considered by the 
weather-wise to be a sign 
of fair, or rainy, weather, 
we forget which. The 
long legs, four pointing 
forward, and four back¬ 
ward, are easy to see, but 
that they are jointed much 
as our fingers and toes 
needs closer looking. The 
eyes are small, only two 
of which can be seen in 
the figure, as little dots on 
the end of the head. The 
spider’s head is a very 
pretty sight under the mi¬ 
croscope, as it is furnished 
with various parts, among 
others the jaws and teeth 
for chewing its food, and 
the gland or sac. which 
furnishes the irritating 
fluid which stings when 
a spider has bitten in 
self-defense. When we 
were a boy —-like many 
another farmer's son, we 
had an “every-day ” and a Sunday pair of boots—one 
Sabbath the church exercise was of little or no interest 
to us on account of the itching of an instep, and matters 
grew no better until we quietly removed the boot, which 
was no easy task right in church (Sunday boots get pret¬ 
ty tight some times before they are turned over for 
“ every-day ”), and a spider jumped out and was glad to 
get away. Spiders do bite, but in most cases only their 
regular food—as flies and other insects—when cornered, 
as the one was in the boot, they will show fight. Great 
stories have been told of the bites of spiders, but prob¬ 
ably they are largely untrue, as are those in which the 
bite has been cured by music. Spi¬ 
ders are not so bad as many would 
make out; they have a great deal of 
heart. Figure 4 shows the bigness 
and also the shape of a spider's 
heart. It is a great heart you may 
think. Perhaps the most interesting 
feature of spiders is their spinning 
machines, by means of which a 
thread is spuu so fine that it would 
take 7,000 of them, placed side by 
/ 3 side, to make an inch, while a thread 
reaching around the earth would 
weigh less than a pound, and yet 
one of these threads is made up of a 
number of smaller ones. The spin¬ 
ning is done by the spinnerets , which 
are situated at the back end of the 
body, and in some kinds of spi¬ 
ders (fig. 1) project outward con¬ 
siderably. Figure 3 shows a highly magnified view 
of the spinnerets as seen under a magnifying glass. The 
spinning organs, which resemble four burs somewhat, 
in the engraving, are made up of a cluster of tubes, 
a single one of which is shown in figure 2, and out of 
these the soft sticky material is forced by the spider. As 
the thread passes out it unites with the others, and, soon 
hardening, becomes a tough, flexible, and smooth thread, 
up and down which the spider can run. The hind legs 
often help in the spinning by pulling the threads out of 
Fig. 2. 
Fig. 3.— SPINNERETS, MAGNIFIED. 
the spinnerets, hand over hand (leg over leg' as it were. 
Spiders often descend very rapidly by spinning out the 
thread by which they hang, stopping almost instantly— 
and starting again, when they sometimes get the right 
swing, and land far to one side. Next to the spinning 
machine in interestare the webs which the spiders weave 
out of their threads. They show great skill and calcula¬ 
tion in the construction of their webs, and an equal de¬ 
gree of fortitude and perseverance when the web is bro¬ 
ken or some other trouble is in the way. The lesson of 
“ Try, try again,” which Robert Bruce is said to have 
learned from the 
spider in the barn 
led him to final vic¬ 
tory over the Eng¬ 
lish, and set Scot¬ 
land free from the Fig. 4.— spider’s heart. 
tyranny of King Edward. We could all learn much from 
these despised spiders which might lead us to as great a 
triumph (though in a different way), as Bruce gained at 
Bannockburn. A spider’s web often lasts a whole sea¬ 
son, but, like a fisherman, he must keep good watch of 
his net and mend it frequently. Nearly all web-spinning 
spiders live under their webs, with backs downward- 
upside down to us—but as they can hardly walk “ right 
side up,” it must be all right to them. 
The webs are of many different shapes—sometimes in 
the form of a dome, in the center of which the spider re¬ 
sides, and is ready to rush out at any moment when a fly 
or other insect is caught. The round webs are the most 
common—and altogether too common—in the comers of 
rooms, about old barns, and many other places. An il¬ 
lustration of these familiar webs is given in figure 5, not 
because it will be new to many of you, but to show how 
the spinner makes its net. The spider first spins a line 
across the place chosen for the web, then returning on 
it to the middle, another line is attached, and as it 
runs to the end of the old line, the new one is spun out, 
holding it away from the old one by the hind legs, when 
it is fastened some distance from the first, thus making 
another ray or rib. In this way the framework is con¬ 
structed, consisting of threads running from the center 
to the outside, like rays of an umbrella. The spider next 
puts in the cross lines by climbing across from one ray 
to another, as it is seen to be doing in the illustration. 
After the web is finished, a thread is connected with it 
and the nest, and the spider keeps its feet upon this 
Fig. 5.—A COB-WEB. 
while in its nest, to feel when anything is caught—just 
as the boy knows when a fish is at his hook by the feet of 
the line or pole—a sort of telegraph which brings good 
news to tiie spider, but a death message to the unsus¬ 
pecting fly which has lucklessly walked into the parlor 
of the crafty, cunning, sly, and watchful spider. 
How Bears CJo to Marlcet. 
In the early days of our country—and it was not very 
many years ago—bears were more common than now. 
They were the terror of the children, so that even to the 
present day, in the older settled parts of the United 
States, the word bear has much of its old eatsyousup 
meaning clinging to it. Children are sometimes fright¬ 
ened by thoughtless persons, who ought to know better, 
by: “ O 1 there is a bear," or “ Look out, the bears will 
eat you up.” We shall never forget how much pain 
some one once caused us by jumping out suddenly, with 
a savage growl, from a dark bush by which we were 
passing with a pail of milk. He, it may be, remembers 
the scene, though it was too dark for much to be noticed, 
and as for the milk—well 1 the cows did not give much 
that night, even though it was late. Bears are very 
strange animals, and along with their savage nature they 
possess a sagacity, or shrewdness, that makes us admiro 
as well as distrust their actions. As a general thing. 
