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

SILKEN MATERIAL OF THE SPIDER 1G3
not neglected to make it a portion of liis unrivalled satire
against speculators and projectors, in liis account of Gulliver's
visit to the Academy of Lagado
" I went into another room, says he, where tlie walls and ceilings were all hung
round with cobwebs, exept a narrow passage for the artist to go in and out. At
my entrance he called out to me not to disturb his webs. He lamented the fatal
mistake the world had been so long in, of using silk-worms, while we had such
plenty of domestic insects, who infinitely excelled the former, because they under-
stood how to weave as well as spin. And he proposed further, that, by employing
spiders, the charge of dyeing silk should be wholly saved ; whereof I was fully
convinced, when he showed me a vast number of flies most beautifully colored,
wherewith lie fed his spiders, assuring us that the webs woiUd take a tincture from
them, and as he had them of all hues, he hoped to suit every body's fancy, as soou
as he could find proper food for the flies, of certain gums, oils, and other glutinous
matter to give a strength and consistency to the tlireads."
The Ingenuity of Spiders.—Mr. Thomas Ewbank of
New York, in a letter to the Editor of the Journal of the
Franklin Institute, bearing date September 20th 1842, gives us
the following interesting description of the ingenuity of the
Spider.
" The resources of the lower animals have often excited admi-
ration, and though no comprehensive and systematic series of
obseiTations have yet been made upon them(?), the time is, I
believe, not distant when the task will be undertaken— perhaps
within the next century. But whenever and by whomsoever
accomplished, the mechanism of animals wiU then form the
subject of one of the
the archives of man.
most interesting and useful volumes in
"Among insects, spiders have repeatedly been observed to
modify and change their contrivances for ensnaring their
prey. Those that hve in fields and gardens often fabricate
their nets or webs vertically. This sometimes occurs in loca-
tions where there is no object sufficiently near to which the
lower edge or extremity of the web can properly be braced
and unless this be done, light puffs or breezes of wind are apt
to blow it into an entangled mass. Instead of being spread out,
like the sail of a ship, to the wind, it would become clewed over
the upper line, or edge, like a sail when furled up. Now how
would a human engineer act under similar circumstances ? But
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