Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 August 1881 — Seth Green’s Spider Story. [ARTICLE]

Seth Green’s Spider Story.

If you anchor a pole in a body of water and put a spider on it he will exhibit marvelous intelligence by his plans to escape. At first he will spin a web several inches long and haDg to one end while he allows the other to float oft in the wind, in the hope that it will strike some object. Of course this plan proves a failure, but the spider is not discouraged. He waits until the wind changes, and then sends another silken bridge floating oft in an other direction, Another failure la followed bv several other similar attempts, until all the points of the compass have been tried. But neither the resources nor the reasoning-powers nf the spider are exhausted. He climbs to the top of pole and energetically goes to work to construct a silken balloon. He has no hot air with which to inflate it, but he has thepowerof making it buoyant. When he gets his balloon .finished he does not go oft upQn kbe mere supposition that it will carry him, as men often do, bat he fastens it to a guy rope, the other end of Which he attaches to the island pole upon which he is a prisoner. He then gets into his aerial vehicle while it is made fast and taste it to see whether its dimensions are capable of the work of bearing him away. He often finds : that ha has made it too small, in which case he hauls it down, takes it all apart, and constructs it on a larger and better plan. A spider has been seen to make thHte different balloons before he became satisfied with his experiment. Then he will get in, snap the gay rope, and sail away to land as gracefully and suupremeiy independent of his surroundings as could, well be imagined.