. American spiders and their spinning work. A natural history of the orbweaving spiders of the United States, with special regard to their industry and habits. Spiders. 68 AMERICAN SPIDERS AND THEIR SPINNINGWORK. branching twigs. As with the former individual, so with this; many efforts were made to obtain foundations by sending out threads from tlie spinner- ets, and to this end lie tried most of the numerous points of the twigs cov- ering the territory which he seemed to have chosen as his general range. One of these, a little pendant, which hung in the centre of the group, was taken as the
. American spiders and their spinning work. A natural history of the orbweaving spiders of the United States, with special regard to their industry and habits. Spiders. 68 AMERICAN SPIDERS AND THEIR SPINNINGWORK. branching twigs. As with the former individual, so with this; many efforts were made to obtain foundations by sending out threads from tlie spinner- ets, and to this end lie tried most of the numerous points of the twigs cov- ering the territory which he seemed to have chosen as his general range. One of these, a little pendant, which hung in the centre of the group, was taken as the basis of a most interesting operation. The spider dropped from the pendant by a line three or four inches long, grasped the Swinging jj^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^£ ^j^^ second pair of feet, and rapidly formed a tri- angular basket of threads by connecting the point of seizure with lines reaching to the feet of the remaining second leg and the third and fourth pairs. (See Fig. 64.) In this basket he hung head upward, the body held at an angle of about 45°, the two fore feet meanwhile stretched out, and groping in the air, as though feeling for the presence of obstruc- tions, of enemies, or of floating threads. At the same time he elevated his spinners and emitted a line which was drawn out at great length by the air, but secured no en- tanglement. The body of the spider had a gen- tle lateral oscillation tliat appeared to the observer to result from a voluntary twisting of the central rope by the animal, but may liave been caused by the air; the effect was to give the output line a. wider swing, and much inci-ease the chance of entanglement. However, there was no entanglement, and the spider dropped several inches further down and repeated the process as described above. This was repeated again and again, and when I allowed the line to attach to my person the spider at once proceeded to satisfy himself of the fact, and then to venture a crossing. In all these actions there were evidences o
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectspiders, bookyear1889
