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

144 CULTIVATION AND MANUFACTURE OF SILK.
ject by some sense of which we are ignorant*. Kirby also
says, that he once observed a small garden spider {Aranea re-
ticulata) " standing midway on a long perpendicular fixed
thread, and an appearance caught" his " eye, of what seemed
to be the emission of threads." " I," therefore, he adds, " moved
my arm in the direction in which they apparently proceeded,
and, as I had suspected, a floating thread attached itself to my
coat, along which the spider crept. As this was connected with
the spinners of the spider, it could not have been formed" by
breaking a "secondary threadt." Again, in speaking of the
gossamer-spider, he says, " it first extends its thigh, shank, and
foot, into a right line, and then, elevating its abdomen till it be-
comes vertical, shoots its thr'ead into the air, and flies off from
its station+."
Another distinguished naturalist, Mr. White of Selborne, in
speaking of the gossamer-spider, says, "Every day in fine
weather in autumn do I see these spiders shooting out theii"
webs, and mounting aloft : they will go off from the finger, if
you take them into your hand. Last summer, one ahghted on
my book as I was reading in the parlor ; ran to the top of the
page, and shooting out a iveb, took its departure from thence.
But what I most wondered at, was, that it went off with considerable
velocity in a place where no air was stirring ; and I am
sure I did not assist it with my breath§."
" Having so often witnessed," says Mr. Rennie, " the thread
set afloat in the air by spiders, we can readily conceive the way
in wliich those eminent naturalists were led to suppose it to be
ejected by some animal force acting like a syringe ; but as the
statement can be completely disproved by experiment, we shaU
only at present ask, in the words of Swammerdam— 'how can
it be possible that a thread so fine and slender should be shot
out with force enough to divide and pass through the air ?—is
it not rather probable that the air would stop its progress, and
so entangle it and fit it to perplex the spider's operationsll V "
* Phil. Mag. ii. p. 275.
t Vol. i. Intr. p. 417. t Ibid. ii. p. .339.
§ Nat. Hist, of Selbome, vol. i. p. 327. |1 Book of Nature, part i. p. 25.