to enable her to hang, week after week, from her web, supporting in her much enlarged body a thousand or so eggs, which she will later lay, not one at a time, but all at once. No surprise is sudden enough to catch her unprepared and make her fall from the dizzy heights where she lives, without first being able to attach an anchor line. This she does by rubbing her spinnerets over the surface on which she stands, and by quickly spreading and bringing them together again she makes an attachment disc from which she can reel out her rope and check her fall.

The gift of spinning from internal reservoirs, supplied by active secreting cells, is common in the insect world as well as in the world of spiders, for thousands of species of caterpillars make cocoons of silk which they spin as rapidly as any spider makes its web. I doubt if any silk-gowned lady ever stops to think how many thousand gorgeous moths have been cut short in their careers in order that the threads which the silkworms have thrown around them to make a nest in which to pupate could be reeled off to make the silken stuff she wears.

A SPIDER FROM A FLY’S POINT OF VIEW

(Dolomedes tenebrosus, Hentz)

A spider from the fly’s point of view is a terrible monster, indeed. Its claws of polished chitin, sharp as sword points, each with an aperture leading to a sac filled with deadly poison, its array of eyes of different sizes, its mottled, hairy skin covered with hollow sensitive bristles, and its powerful, leg-like palpi must strike terror to the heart of any fly or cockroach which may happen in its neighborhood.

Civilized man rarely sees the ferocity of wild beasts displayed, for even in the jungle it is hard to observe. To anyone, however, who will watch a spider devour a fly, the true picture of merciless cruelty will be apparent. With its poisoned sword-like fangs it kills its prey, and then, with its sucking mouthparts, it sucks the juice out of the carcass.