The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous ... - Cd3wd.com

SILKEN MATERIAL OF THE SPIDER.
143
to the top of the Stick, immediately pulled at it with one of its
feet and finding it sufficiently tense, crept along it, stiengthcn-
ing'it as it proceeded by another thread, and thus reached the
pencil." ,,
1. " We have repeatedly witnessed this occurrence, says Mr.
Rennie, " in the fields, and when spiders were placed for experi-
ment, as Kirby has described; but we very much doubt that
the thread broken is ever intended as a bridge cable, or that it
would have been so used in that instance, had it not been arti-
ficially fixed and again accidentally found by the spider. Ac-
cording to our observations, a spider never for an instant, aban-
dons, the thread which she dispatches in quest of an attach-
ment, but uniformly keeps trying it with her feet, in order to
ascertain its success. We are, therefore, persuaded, that when
a thread is broken in the manner above described, it is because
it has been spun too weak, and spiders may often be seen break-
ing such threads in the process of netting their webs."
The plan, besides, as explained by these distinguished writers,
would more frequently prove abortive than successful, from the
cut thread not being sufficiently long. They admit, indeed,
that spiders' lines are often found " a yard or two long, fastened
to twigs of grass not a foot in height. . .
.^^.
fore, some other process must have been used*."
Here, there-
2. The celebrated Enghsh naturalist, Dr. Lister, whose
treatise upon the native spiders of that country, has been the
basis of every subsequent work on the subject, maintains that
" some spiders shoot out their threads in the same manner tliat
porcupines do their quillst ; that whereas the quills of the lat-
ter are entirely separated from their bodies, when thus shot out,
the threads of the former remain fixed to their anus, as the
sun's rays to its bodyt."
A French periodical writer goes a lit-
tle farther, and says, that spiders have the power of sliooiing
out threads, atid directing them at pleasure towards a determined
point, judging of the distance and position of the ob-
* Kirbv and Spence, vol. i. Intr. p. 41G.
t Porcupines do not shoot out their quills, as was once generally believed.
t Lister, Hist. Animulia Anglian 4to. p. 7.