THE WEB OE UBE 
83 
catch is a fierce big wasp or a delicious little insect, and 
she knows whether to stay safely where she is or to 
scramble out and seize upon her prey. 
Her web is beautifully planned; it is woven in and out 
and round about upon a scaffolding which she afterwards 
removes; every silken thread is related to every other 
thread, and because of this relationship and this com¬ 
pleteness, Mr. Thomson uses the spider’s web as a sym¬ 
bol of the web of life—woven by Mother Nature in and 
out and round about among her creatures so that nowhere 
a link is missing. 
“No creature lives or dies to 4 *eelf. All are linked to 
other lives, often in unsuspected ways.” The most im¬ 
portant linkage in the world is one of which we have been 
talking, the linkage between flowers and their insect 
visitors. Charles Darwin has a story to tell about this; 
it is called his “cats and clover” story. 
“Round a hundred heads of the purple clover Darwin 
put muslin bags so that air got in and sunlight got in, 
but no insects. From these hundred heads he got not a 
single real seed, while from another hundred heads with¬ 
out muslin bags he obtained 27,000 seeds. These heads 
had been visited by the humble-bee, which effects cross¬ 
fertilization. So the more humble-bees the better next 
year’s clover crop. 
