Archive image from page 228 of American spiders and their spinning. 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 CUbiodiversity1121211-9742 Year: 1889 ( CHAPTER XIV. MECHANICAL STRENGTH OF WEBS AND PHYSICAL POWER OF SPIDERS. I. The size of orbwebs varies generally with the size of the builders. But location, the condition of the wind, and contiguity of other webs have much to do in determining the matter. The abundance of insect food may be a factor modifying both form and size. An
Archive image from page 228 of American spiders and their spinning. 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 CUbiodiversity1121211-9742 Year: 1889 ( CHAPTER XIV. MECHANICAL STRENGTH OF WEBS AND PHYSICAL POWER OF SPIDERS. I. The size of orbwebs varies generally with the size of the builders. But location, the condition of the wind, and contiguity of other webs have much to do in determining the matter. The abundance of insect food may be a factor modifying both form and size. An example of this was seen in the colony of Epeiroids referred to, Cliapter III., as stretching their Food across the water between the Mofles ' houses at Atlantic City. (Fig. 61.) There the flies swarmed in such myriads that the difficulty of ob- taining food was reduced almost to the minimum. As a consequence most of the spiders hung in the merest rudiments of webs, as shown at Fig. 216. In some cases these may have been the remains of more or less perfect snares, which had become reduced to remnants by struggles of in- sects; but many of them showed no traces of any other architecture than that here represented, and I inferred that the spiders had discovered that the building of complete orbs was a useless waste of labor and material, and had spvin no more than the central space. A Furrow spider taken from the railings of a bridge, where its space was circumscribed by location and by luimerous webs of its fellows, when placed in a roomy cell spun an orb eleven and a half inches long by eight inches wide, hung upon a foundation line sixteen inches long. The same aranead, when placed in a glass jar three inches wide, wove a small characteristic web, or an apology for one, not unlike the rudimentary snare at Fig. 216. Argiope cophinaria often makes a very small web, and is quite sure to do so when the arboreal spaces surrounding it are straitened. But when domiciled where
Size: 1416px × 1412px
Photo credit: © Bookive / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: 1880, 1889, _philadelphia_the_author_academy_of_natural_scienc, _philadelphia_the_author_academy_of_natural_science_of_philadelphia, archive, book, bookauthor, bookdecade, bookpublisher, booksubject, bookyear, drawing, historical, history, illustration, image, mccook_henry_c_henry_christopher_1837_1911, page, picture, print, reference, spiders, vintage
