. 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. COMMERCIAL VALUE OF SPIDKR SILK. ST scientific and popular publications,1 he communicated many interesting ob- servations, and advocated with much enthusiasm the possibility of estab- lishing a new silk industry from the spinningwork of some of Wilder s our American spider species. He was led into his investigations xp r while serving as an army surgeon (August, 1863) in the war against the Southern rebellion, and with especial
. 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. COMMERCIAL VALUE OF SPIDKR SILK. ST scientific and popular publications,1 he communicated many interesting ob- servations, and advocated with much enthusiasm the possibility of estab- lishing a new silk industry from the spinningwork of some of Wilder s our American spider species. He was led into his investigations xp r while serving as an army surgeon (August, 1863) in the war against the Southern rebellion, and with especial view to fur- nish suitable employment for the multitude of negro slaves who had been launched upon liberty by the rude force of war, and without the responsi- bility and occupations demanded for prosperous freedmen. While encamped in South Carolina his attention was arrested by the remarkable spinning qualities of a species of Nephila'2 which inhabits the Carolina sea islands and Florida. He invented an ingenious apparatus for reeling off silk from the spinnerets, and better adapted to the long cylindrical abdomen of Nephila than that of Abbe Termeyer, whose method he was quite ignorant of until three years later, but which he then studied and gave to the general public. The first specimen from which Pro- fessor Wilder tried to reel silk remained quiet under the process for an hour and a quarter, and until he had ob- tained one hundred and fifty yards of thread ; but its successors were less com- plaisant. He accordingly contrived an apparatus substantially like Termeyer's, which also served the double purpose of keeping the animal in an immovable position, and preventing her from cut- ting the extruding thread with her feet, large corks, a bent hairpin, two large toilet pins, a bit of card, and a bit of lead. One cork served as a body rest, and the bottom was loaded with the lead, one half its top beveled off at an angle of 45°, and the card (Fig. 54, c) fixed upon the obliq
Size: 1171px × 2134px
Photo credit: © Central Historic Books / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectspiders, bookyear1889
