THE SNARE-WEAVERS. 189 
covering of silk, and going closer and closer as his 
legs are entangled, she twists him round and round 
with her feet till, quite enveloped, he can struggle no 
longer and receives his death-blow. 
But if by chance it had been a wasp, and she 
dreaded its sting, she herself would have torn the 
strands of the web and let it fly away sooner than 
run the risk of being the conquered instead of the 
conqueror. 
So the garden spider lives, spreading her snares 
with wonderful skill and care, running and dropping 
from her thread with agility and precision, and 
making great havoc in the insect world with her 
poisonous fangs ; and if you ask what apparatus she 
has within to guide all these wonderful actions, we 
must go back again to the knots of nervous matter 
which we found in the body of the leech. For here 
in the spider we find that many of these knots are 
clustered thickly together in the head and neck, 
forming what might almost be called a brain, and 
connected with the line of knots running along in 
the under part of the abdomen. Thus, while the 
spider is endowed with many tools and weapons upon 
her body, she has also a strong battery of nerve 
power within to govern them. 
Nor can we doubt that she owes to the stern 
lessons of life much of her skill and intelligence. 
She has to undergo sad privations, and in bad 
weather, when starvation stares her in the face, she 
is often driven to wander in search of such insects 
as she can catch ; while long experience has taught 
her race never to spin a web when it would be 
destroyed by wind or rain, but to fast patiently or 
