Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/392

376 about to those of the birds. The hunting spiders leap and hop, the house spiders generally run forward, other kinds run backward and sideways with equal facility, and some, as we have seen, float about in the air. The most marvelous of the spiders' gifts is the silk-spinning. The spinnerets or spinners are little organs at the hind end of the body. Each has a number of very minute holes in it. Out of these the silk flows in a liquid form, but as



soon as the air strikes it it hardens into a thread. The strands from the different holes all unite and form what we know as the spider's thread. There are great differences in the kinds of webs and nests which different spiders make. One of the most interesting is the web of the great black-and-gold garden spider. First she spins several lines all joined in the center like the spokes of a wheel, and attached to stems or leaves of plants at the outer edges. When the rays are finished she begins at the middle to