Spiders and Their Webs

New Zealand Tablet, 14 April 1910, Page 579

Spiders and Their Webs

There are 500 different kinds of spiders carefully described as occurring in the British Islands, and about 2000 others from remoter regions (remarks Sir Ray Lankester in the Daily Tclcqrapli). Precisely which of them forms the ‘gossamer’ of our meadows it' is difficult to say, as all have the habit of secreting a viscid fluid from one or two pairs of projecting spinning knobs or stalks, which are seen at the hinder end of the body. The viscid fluid is poured out by a great number of minute tubes, and hardens at once into a thread, which is wonderfully fine, yet strong. Different kinds of spiders make use of these - threads for different purposes, hence their name ‘spinners.’ Some make burrows in the ground and line them with a felt of these threads others enclose their eggs in a case formed by winding them round the eggs ; others form ‘snares’ of the ; most marvellous mechanical ingenuity with these threads, by which insects are entangled and are then paralysed by the poisonous stab of the spider’s claws, and have their juices sucked out of them at the spider’s leisure. The snares of spiders are in some species merely irregular webs fastened and suspended by threads, in other cases they are gracefully modelled funnels or cups, whilst a third kind, the disc-like webs made up of radiating and circularly-dis-posed threads fixed in a geometrical pattern, excel—in the mechanical precision of their workmanship, and the masterly treatment of engineering difficulties—the constructions of any other kind of animal. It is amongst this kind of spiders that the formation by the spinning knobs of threads or lines and their use in various ways is most general and frequent. The smaller spiders allow the viscid thread to exude, drawing it out from their bodies by their own movement away from the object to which it* at first adhered. When it breaks loose from that support it is carried upwards by air-currents and drawn out from the spinner’s body to many yards’ length. It then becomes a ‘ flying-line,’ and the spider may sail away on it or run up it and disappear. The celebrated story of the Indian juggler’s performance traditional and even solemnly ■ attested by witnesses, but failing to pass the test of photography—must have been suggested by this common, yet wonderful, proceeding of small spiders. The juggler, standing in an open place, surrounded by a ring of spectators, uncoils a rope fifty feet long from his waist, and holding one end, throws the other up into the air. The rope, without any support, remains stretched and upright. A small boy now enters the ring and climbs up the rope, draws it up after him, and disappears with it in the upper air 1 That is an illusion, but it is precisely what thousands of small spiders are continually doing. *