Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 June 1887 — What Spiders Can Do. [ARTICLE]

What Spiders Can Do.

Spiders are certainly very clever, their talent does not lie in one direction only,they are clever all around; they are rope-makers, silk manufactures, spinners, weavers, tent-makers, potters, masons, raft manufacturers, navvies—witness their tunnels—diving-bell makers; they hunt, they dive, they run along the water, they skate, and" thej are ;eronauts. Among these last are the garden spider, the labyrinthine spider, the aeronautic spider, and the gossamer spider, and this is how the teronautic exploits are achieved. When they want to cross a stream or a chasm, or to rise to some height, they first of all spin a little piece of rope and fasten it firmly to some object; they then cling to this strand with their feet, and with their heads downwards, raise the lower part of their bodies into the air, and as soon as they feel the lighest current of air they throw off from their spinnerets a yard or two of silk; this being covered with viscid globules, is sure to adhear to some other object, and as soon as the spiders feel this is the case they tighten it by gathering it up and gumming it together, and then venture across their cable bridge, spinning a second line as they go to strengthen the first. Sometimes they suspend themselves from this bridge, and descend, spinning a rope, on which to effect the downward journey as they go: at others they will throw out a quantity of gossamer, and as a current of air wrafts this upwards they mount aloft upon it. The com-mon-house spider, which always spins a horizontal web, and therefore could not trust to committing a floating thread to the wind, works on a different plan. She walks around to the opposite side from which she has fastened he web, carrying it with her, and then draws it up and tightens it, and as the strength of the web depends upon this first ’cable she, like all other spiders crosses and recrosses tliis, and tests it by swinging her whole weight on it until she is quite satisfied as to its power of indnrance. Another spider, often seen on windows on a summer's day, is the leaping spider; and if watched it will be seen to justify its name by taking short leaps, frequently alighting on a fly -or gnat; which it has previosly marked down as its prey. It will jump in any direction, because it is always suspended by one of its own silken ropes, which it spins as it leaps, and by it returns to its former plac& This spider makes a" silken nest among leaves or stones—an oval bag, open at both ends. It uses the nest as a place of retreat during the .winter or in bad weather, or when it is moulting, or tired from its hunting expeditions, for it belongs to the group of hunting spiders, and makes no net or web though occassionaly it contracts a tent. — Sunday Magarino.