. 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. THE AERONAUTIC OR BALLOONING HABIT. 265 found them to be lupi [Lycosids], which seldom or never enter houses, and cannot be supposed to have takeji their flight from the ; ^ I once found a number of half grown Epeiras upon their round webs on the topmost railing of the dome of St. Peter's at Rome (Italy), Avhither they or their maternal ancestor had doubtless been carried by the wind from the surface of the earth.
. 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. THE AERONAUTIC OR BALLOONING HABIT. 265 found them to be lupi [Lycosids], which seldom or never enter houses, and cannot be supposed to have takeji their flight from the ; ^ I once found a number of half grown Epeiras upon their round webs on the topmost railing of the dome of St. Peter's at Rome (Italy), Avhither they or their maternal ancestor had doubtless been carried by the wind from the surface of the earth. October 25th, 1883, was a bright day following a series of cold, wet days caused by a severe northeast storm. At noon, M'hile crossing the Chestnut Street Bridge, Philadelphia, I saw a great number of „ aeronautic threads floating in the air, streaming from the tips of the bridge balustrade and lodged upon the piers. One of the threads, a long filament, was sailing slowly toward the river as a Pennsyl- vania Railroad train dashed along the river track beneath the bridge. It was low enough to strike the cars as they rolled by, and so was carried on southward with its tiny voyager—another illus- tration of how artificial habits of man tend to the geographical distribution of life. The filaments were long, pure white, curled or wrinkled, about one millimetre wide or less, occasionally expanded into thicker wads, and fre(|uently carried attached to them minute insects which had doubtless en- tangled in the fibres as the threads floated in the air. (Fig. 280.) On one thread I found three, „ „,„ „ . F'G. 276. Young spider sending on another two small flies. The young balloonist out aeronautic threads while is thus provided with food upon his hmding, if "^""^"^ "p°" "^ "'"'• he choose to avail himself of these chance supplies. The insects are sim- ply entangled, as the fibre is without viscidity. The field observations recor
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectspiders, bookyear1889
