Spiders
SOME THINGS ABOUT SPIDERS
AND THEIR WAYS.
SPIDERS rank among the most interesting animals in the insect world but it is not needful that more than a general description be given of a creature so well known. It may be observed, however, that the body is composed of two pieces, and the legs are generally eight in number. Each limb has seven joints, and the foot usually terminates in two claws; but some spiders have only one, while others have three or four. At the base of each jaw is a feeler, or palp, with little claws at its tip. The spider has six or eight eyes, and its skin is rather leathery and horny, sprinkled over with hairs and little spines.
The name in natural history for this insect is arachne, which term also includes scorpions and mites. There are some ten special varieties of spiders, and they are around in all parts of the world, but are largest in warm countries. Being carnivorous in their habits, they devour their prey alive. Spiders are very fond of fighting, the victorious party commonly devouring the other. They are very cleanly in their habits, and spend much time in cleaning themselves from dust with the toothed combs and brushes which nature has attached to their limbs.
Tarantulas, also, belong to the spider species. This variety makes no web, but wanders about for its prey, which it runs down with great swiftness. Its den is made in crevices and holes which it neatly lines with silk of its own manufacture.
Spiders generally hatch but one brood in a year. The eggs are carefully protected in little silken bags, or cocoons. The female spider lays nearly a thousand eggs in a season. The mother is quite affectionate to her young family, and in return for this maternal care her little ones frequently devour her alive. The males and females live separately. The latter are the ones most frequently seen, and are much the larger.
Spiders can endure long fasts, and in this climate they remain torpid during winter. Some of them live several years.
Though objects of general aversion from their cruel habits and dismal haunts, yet they display an instinct which amounts almost to reason.
The most remarkable office of spiders is that of weaving their webs by means of a silken thread drawn from fleshy warts on the under side of the abdomen. These spinning glands, called spinnerets, are from four to six in number, and contain thousands of delicate openings, from each of which descends a thread so thin as to be invisible to the naked eye until all are united in one. One set of these warts, or spinnerets, produces threads, which are glutinous, while another set furnishes those, which are smooth.
In spinning their webs, spiders show much perseverance, and great ingenuity.
Recently a spider managed to fasten a silken cable across a river more than a mile in width! They perform such feats in the following manner: When they wish to go from tree to tree, or cross a stream, they let go a thread from their spinnerets in the direction of the wind, and when their delicate sense of touch tells them it has reached an object, they pass over it.
In this way they travel long distances without descending to the ground, a multitude of tiny cables being seen on dewy mornings of spring and autumn. Some small gossamer spiders even speed through the air buoyed up by their fragile threads. Mr. Darwin, in the journal of the voyage of "The Beagle," says that when anchored in the river La Plata, sixty miles from the shore, he has seen the rigging covered with cobwebs, and the air full of pieces of web floating about. The spiders, however, when they struck the ship, were always hanging from single threads.
The beautiful ray-like webs, which we commonly see, so like a figure in geometry, as shown in the cut, are made by a variety of spiders called Epeiridoe, from the Greek word peird,"to affix." This species includes the common Garden Spider. How nicely they affix their webs to a limb, or the angle of a window!
Savage and unsocial as spiders are, they are capable of a certain amount of domestication. Pelisson, a prisoner in the old French Bastile, had a pet spider which came regularly at the sound of a musical instrument to get its meal of flies; and a spider-raiser in France is said to have tamed eight hundred, which he kept in a single apartment for the silk made from their gossamer threads. Spiders readily learn to take food from the hand or a pair of forceps, or water from a brush, and will come to the mouth of their bottle and reach after it on tip-toe.
The spider's supply of silk seems to be limited to sufficient to make six or seven webs in a season. The thread is very strong and fine, and one of its uses is for the division of the micrometer in astronomy.
According to Louenhoek, the great naturalist, it takes four millions of the extremely delicate threads to make a thread as large as a human hair. And each thread of the spider as used in the web is made up of thousands of smaller ones.
A CURIOUS thing in the natural history of spiders is their power of reproducing their limbs after they have been broken off. In such cases it is never a part of a limb which is reproduced; but if a portion is removed, the wise spider proceeds at once to throw off the residue; and after the next molt behold the entire missing limb again appears!
Spiders' webs have been manufactured into a delicate fabric for dresses and gloves; but it is said that to obtain one pound of spiders' silk, the webs of six hundred thousand spiders would be needed. Probably the production of silk from spiders will always be more a matter of curiosity than of utility. But spiders serve one important purpose in the economy of nature, they catch an abundance of flies and insects by their geometrically constructed webs, and, in turn, they are devoured by birds and reptiles. And, disgusting as it may seem, they form a part of the diet of barbarous peoples, as the Indians, Africans, and Australians. Spiders' webs are also in high repute among physicians for staunching the flow of blood from wounds.
We have already remarked that there are a number of species of the spider family. One class, called Natantes, or Swimmers, are water-spiders. Such are the nimble little water-skippers shown in the engraving. This variety are wholly aquatic in their habits. They spin a cup-like web, which answers the purpose of a diving bell.
They can readily exhaust the air from this miniature web-cup, which is about half the size of a common acorn, and then descend beneath the surface to feed on water insects below; or when they wish, come to the top to disport on the water. Their tiny hairs keep their bodies from becoming wet, and in their nests in the water they are as dry as if they were in a hole in the wall.
One species of spider, known as the Attidce, i. e., Jumping Spiders, makes no web,
but wanders in search of its prey. It is common in summer on the walls and windows, basking in the sun. It crawls stealthily up to flies, and jumps with great accuracy upon its victims. Before leaping upon a fly it fixes a thread to secure itself from falling. Mr. Livingston mentions a South African spider of this variety which can leap a foot. Another species is called Thomisidce, or Crab Spiders. Some of them seem to walk better sidewise than forward. The large crab spider of South America is able to leap upon and destroy humming-birds and lizards. That part of its victim which it does not eat, it suspends by a cable from a limb for future use. This spider is about three inches long, and its legs extend over a space of eight or ten inches.
The Lycosidce, or Running Spiders, have long legs, and are very active, living in open places, and catching their prey with-out webs.
The Agalenidce, another variety, make flat webs, with a funnel-shaped tube at one side, in which the spider remains waiting for his prey.
The Mygalidce includes the largest spiders known. They live only in warm countries. They have marked anatomical differences from the other families of spiders.
The long-legged cellar spider, called the Pholcus, has a curious habit of hanging on a cable by its legs and whirling round so fast that it can scarcely be seen.
The distinguished naturalist, Walckennser, divides all spiders into five different groups as follows : 1. Hunting Spiders; 2. Wandering Spiders; 3. Prowling Spiders; 4. Sedentary Spiders; And, 5. Water Spiders. Daddy Long-legs, frequently called Grandfather Graybeard, is of the spider species. Little cow-boys frequently catch them and make them point in the supposed direction that the cows are, before going for the evening herd.
Spiders have the bad reputation of being animals that bite; but Mr. Emerton, a very careful writer about their habits, says, " Not- withstanding the number of stings and pimples that are laid to spiders, undoubted cases of their biting the human skin are very rare; and the stories of death, insanity, and lameness from spider-bites are probably all untrue."
The lives of pious persons have been saved in times of persecution by a spider spinning his web across the entrance to the cave in which they were secreted, their perscutors thinking that no one could have entered without tearing away the web. In the Holy Scriptures the little spider is referred to as an emblem of industry.
G. W. AMADON.
