March, 1912 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
17 
erected. This can be covered 
on the back with almost any 
of the climbing vines. Roses, 
honeysuckle, clematis, trum¬ 
pet vine or moon flower are 
all suitable for this work. 
With a little pruning and 
training the screen can within 
a season or two be converted 
into a beautiful garden orna¬ 
ment. 
Tennis courts are, of course, 
made in a variety of ways, 
but for a garden feature the 
grass court is the most ef¬ 
fective. A clay court is more 
costly, for the ground must 
be excavated to a depth of 
eight or ten inches so that a 
proper foundation can be 
made of stones, cinders and gravel. But even a grass tennis 
court must be laid with the greatest care and provision be made 
for drainage. In fact the drainage problem is one of the most 
important in selecting a site and in building a court, and if over¬ 
looked there will be many promising days when you cannot play 
owing to water and mud surface. 
The site for the court should have a perfectly unobstructed 
space of not less than 60 by 120 feet, and wire netting 10 to 12 
feet high should surround the inclosure at least 15 feet back 
from the lines. To make a 
good dirt court it will be nec¬ 
essary first to dig off the sur¬ 
face to a depth of at least one 
foot, and level it roughly with 
a spirit level. The cost of this 
excavation in ordinary dirt is 
not more than ten or fifteen 
dollars, but where rocks must 
be blasted away the cost may 
be five or six times as much. 
After leveling the founda¬ 
tion a six-inch layer of trap- 
rock, such as used in macad¬ 
amizing roads, or any broken 
stones ranging in size from a 
walnut to an egg, should be 
placed in the excavation. This 
must be leveled off also to 
keep the grade. An uneven 
tennis court will never give satisfaction. Before the next layer of 
gravel is placed on the trap-rock, provision must be made for 
drainage. There are several methods of draining a court, de¬ 
pending partly upon the nature of the soil and the preference of 
the owners. 
For ordinary soil a good method is to lay the drain-pipe near 
the net and at right angles to the courts, dividing them in half. 
The drain pipe may consist of stone sewer pipes cut in half or 
{Coutimicd on page 70) 
A little shelter for onlookers is a necessary adjunct to the court and may 
be simply and artistically constructed 
The Mathematical Spider 
BY William A. V o l l m e r 
THE WAY THE SPIDER SPINS 
HIS INTRICATE WEB 
T FIERE is so much in the point of 
view that our ideas and atti¬ 
tudes become frozen and petrified be¬ 
cause we see one side, accept it as the 
complete perception and squat there in 
smug complacency. A walk to the 
other side of the object would in many 
cases be a discovery as great as that 
of Columbus. With the spider, gen¬ 
erations of old woman tales have made 
us loathe it as dangerous even to life. 
As a matter of fact, no one has ever 
entered the medical record as “died 
from the bite of a garden spider.’’ 
There is a deal that we lose in this 
spirit that makes us kill every little 
garter-snake and destroy the pains¬ 
taking efforts of the spider. For me 
the legend of Pallas Minerva and 
Arachne did much to remove the 
prejudice, for I learned to see in the 
spider the persecuted object of an un¬ 
just wrath. Ovid tells the story with 
minute detail in the Metamorphosis. 
Arachne in the pride of her weaving 
skill, engages with Pallas in a con¬ 
test for supremacy in the making of 
tapestry. Though the mortal Arachne 
might have been more clever, her 
An orb web hung at the top of a bush with extra lines 
to serve as fenders 
HOW CLEVERLY HE CON¬ 
TRIVES TO LIVE BY TRAPPING 
choice of subject was ill chosen in that 
she portrayed the frailties of the 
Olympians in her woven fabric. Pal¬ 
las, enraged at the slighted dignity of 
the immortals, changed Arachne into 
a spider and doomed her to continue 
forever at her spinning in the form of 
that creature. It is from this legend 
that the generic name of spiders was 
taken. Spiders then evidently excited 
the interest of the Greek mind mainly 
through their ability to weave. 
It is this faculty that continues to 
interest us to-day. Not alone the mar¬ 
velous dexterity of weaving delicate 
thread into the geometrically figured 
webs that swing in our gardens and 
on hedge and fence, but also in the 
cunning which devises these gossamer 
threads as snares to trap prey and 
thus obtain a livelihood. These are 
the things that are well worth consid¬ 
ering by those whose inclinations or 
opportunities preclude a scientific 
knowledge. The web and its weaving 
and the spider’s use of his snare will 
bear some elucidation here. 
Most of us have taken notice of 
the dew-starred filaments glistening in 
