Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18.djvu/149

1866.] for some time I had observed that they all were becoming more or less emaciated, and relished their food less than at first. Occasionally one died from no apparent cause. The mortality increasing toward the end of the month, and all of them losing both flesh and vigor, I was persuaded to try them with water,—a thing I had thus far declined to do, never having heard of a spider's drinking water, and knowing that our common house species can hardly get it at all. The result was most gratifying: a drop of water upon the tip of a camel's-hair pencil, not only was not avoided, but greedily seized and slowly swallowed, being held between the jaws and the palpi. All of the spiders took it, and some even five or six drops in succession. You will exclaim, "Poor things! what tortures they must have suffered!" I admit that it could not have been pleasant for them to go so long without that which they crave every day, but I cannot believe that creatures whose legs drop off on very slight provocation, and which never show any sign whatever of real pain, suffered very acute pangs even when subjected to what occasions such distress to ourselves.

The few survivors straightway improved in health and spirits; but being now convinced that a moist atmosphere was almost as needful as water to drink, I turned them loose in the north wing of the hot-house in Dr. Gray's Botanical Garden at Cambridge. They all mysteriously disappeared, excepting one, which made a nice web at one end just under the ridge-pole, and for several weeks lived and grew fat upon the flies; but a thorough fumigation of the house with tobacco so shocked her not yet civilized organization that she died.

Her untimely death, however, afforded opportunity for a closer examination of the web itself. The first one she had made was not vertical; and, following the prevalent ideas as to the precise construction of the spider's web, I had felt somewhat ashamed of my pet, but supposed the next she made would be an improvement. But no, the rebellious insect constantly made them all (for, it should have been said before, this spider seldom uses the same web more than forty-eight hours) after the same manner, and finally I laid it to a depraved idiocrasy, incident to captivity and poor health. But now another and most unexpected feature developed itself; for, on attempting to remove the last web by placing against it a large wire ring, and cutting the guy-lines, I found that this most degenerate spider had not only failed to make her house perpendicular, but had so far departed from the traditions of our ancestors as to have the centre thereof decidedly eccentric, and four times as near the upper as the lower border of the web, so that its upper portion was only a confused array of irregular lines, which it was impossible to secure to the frame. For any accurate observation my web was of no value. But perhaps this was best; for had I then learned what I have since, that our spider utterly ignores every precedent, not only in the position and shape of her web, but also in its minute arrangement, I might have been so affected by her evident bad character and radical proclivities, as to have feared paying her any further attentions,—much more, presenting her to the world.

But in order to understand how these further discoveries were made, we must again go back to the original sixty spiders in my room at Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina.

At the time of their capture, I had observed upon a few of the webs little brown spiders, which I then imagined might be the half-grown young. Six of these were found among the sixty larger spiders, and a moment's examination of their palpi or feelers (Fig. 5) showed that they were males, though even then I could not believe they had reached their maturity; for their bodies were only about one fourth of an inch in length, and weighed only one thirty-second part of a grain, while the females were from an inch to an inch and a quarter in length, and weighed from three to four grains. It was as absurd