Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/821

Rh among the most insignificant of beings; but they play an important part in nature, and often serve the interests of cultivators by causing the destruction of numerous noxious insects. They are the Theridions. Some of them form a web with wide meshes, while others weave a regular tissue that rests directly upon the grass or is fixed upon other plants. They usually lurk under their webs. The females make several cocoons for their young and keep them in their nets. Some species build a dome-shaped shelter out of foreign bodies fastened together with threads. Sometimes the grapes in vineyards are covered with a web so fine that it escapes notice, and the grape is swallowed, web, spider, and all. Walckenaër named this species Theridium benignum, considering it beneficent. It lives in part on insects injurious to the vine, and its little web protects the grapes against the attacks of animals fond of good fruit, but which will not venture to embarrass their mouths with spiders' webs.

Spiders very generally take pains to isolate themselves from one another. It is a matter of instinct. Were it not so, there would be perpetual slaughterings. Two spiders meeting never fail to be taken with a terrible desire to devour each other; but there are curious exceptions to this rule. Minute spiders, called Linyphia, are not afraid to attach their nets to the large-meshed webs of the great epeïras. Some linyphias, like the Linyphia argyroides, are of curious forms, from four to six millimetres in size at the largest, and are adorned, on a reddish-brown ground, with golden and silvery colors that shine with a bright luster. They may be remarked in the south of Europe and in Africa, stationed on a little net within the meshes of the web of a superb epeïra. A feature that adds to the singularity of the grouping at a certain period is the presence of the cocoon of the linyphia, hanging by a slight thread from the web of the larger species; but treachery sometimes invades this association. An epeïra and a linyphia had lived in the best of relations. The larger spider was taken away from her abode, leaving the cradle of her family without defense. On the next day the linyphia had opened the cocoon and was quietly eating the half-hatched epeïras.

There are legions of spiders, superior to all the others, living in the shade, which are distinguished in an extraordinary degree by their habits and instincts, and perhaps by their intelligence. These species do not make webs, but have some of them only a shift for a refuge, others simple abodes, and still others quite sumptuous habitations. In temperate climates many of them construct in secluded spots, from a fine white silk, well-finished tunnels in which they make a nearly permanent residence. The Segestria are the most important members of this group. The Florentine or perfidious segestrium, the larger species of the genus,