SPIDER HUNTERS

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 47, Issue 2670, 15 September 1937, Page 2

SPIDER HUNTERS

USE OF THE SILKEN THREAD INSTRUMENT MAKERS’ NEED Who wants live spiders? We, say the instrument makers; we want some spiders. Every now and again the spiderhunters go off on their strange quest, says a writer in an English newspaper. Some go on the commons (Strensall Common in Yorkshire is a happy hunting ground), taking with them empty pill boxes. They are searching for the Epeira Diademata, a beautifully marked spider with a cross on its back.

The hunters must be careful not to frighten the spiders, and their work is to entice the little creatures into pill boxes.

When 80 or 100 have been trapped the. hunter goes back to the factory, where the spiders are placed on a stick held about three feet from the ground. Gently shaken, they fall at the end of a fine silken thread, and after about ten of these threads have been collected the spiders are released.

The silken strand of the web is often less than a 5000th part of an inch across, and it is this thread which is needed for making surveying and astronomical instruments. So the spiders help us to study the stars. Sometimes a still finer thread is needed, and to obtain this a skilled workman takes an- extremely fine needle and with it splits the silken cord, taking away one or more strands, a process which needs a steady eye and a steady hand.