Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/851

Rh of the cocoon, we can only guess, for we have not got at her opinions as yet.

Perhaps the most peculiar of the web-makers is figured by Prof. Wilder, who calls the wise little spinner the triangle spider, from the shape of her snare. From the point on a twig which she selects for her resting-place, or roost, as the professor calls it, she stretches a single line a few inches, and from that point spreads four long, widely diverging lines like radii. Having done this, she proceeds to cross these cables with viscid threads like the rounds of a ladder, and, when completed about two thirds the length of the radii, the whole web looks like three distinct ladders, side by side. Everything arranged to her mind, the small architect retires to her post, the single thread from which the whole hangs, and sets her trap by drawing up the slack and holding it in a loop between her feet. In this strained position she remains for hours with the motionless patience of her race. But let a fly touch her web and she is wide awake on the instant. Her trick then is to let the loop she has held go with a snap that jerks the web and is sure to still further complicate the entanglement of the struggling fly. If this is not enough to complete his capture, she repeats the operation several times. Should he not be by this time altogether subdued, she starts down her line, drawing a fresh thread after her, cutting the old ones one after another, and, at last, as the professor says, she gathers the entire net in her hands, and throws it like a blanket over the prey. If this skillful little trapper were not a poor little half-inch-long spider, what a wonderful performance that would seem!

The triangle spider too is more amiable than some of her family in giving her mate a share of her home. According to our close observer of New Jersey, the little creature, about half the size of his spouse, lives in an upper corner of her web, apparently interested in the fly-catching business merely as a spectator. Whether he ever makes a web, and where he gets his dinners, are still unknown.

Many attempts have been made to compel the "daughter of Arachne" to work in harness, so to speak, and in consideration of food and protection to give up her silken threads for our use, as the silkworm contentedly does. Fortunately for her liberty, she is a personage of so marked individuality that no way has yet been devised competent to overcome her natural inclination to have her own way. Prof. Wilder has given much study to the subject of ways and means, and has, he thinks, perfected a plan by which one of the strong-web spinners (Nephila plumipes) may be trained to weave as well as to eat in our service. By this plan each spinner is to have her own home, a wire ring surrounded by water. She is to be fed with flies, which, alas! are not to reduce