Spider

“ The watching of the nest and the easy acquisition of provender would go hand in hand. The Spider is of another opinion; and I suspect the reason.
The sheet-net and the labyrinth that surmounts it are objects visible from afar, owing to their whiteness and the height whereat they are placed. Their scintillation in the sun, in frequented paths, attracts Mosquitoes and Butterflies, like the lamps in our rooms and the fowler’s looking-glass. Whoso comes to look at the bright thing too closely dies the victim of his curiosity. ”

“ As I stood for a moment doubting whether I should proceed, and a good deal puzzled about the whole affair, I caught sight of a large spider crouched up in a corner with his stomach on the ground and his knees above his head, as some spiders do sit, and looking at me, as I fancied, through a pair of spectacles. ”

“ The old spider watcheth us in self-hugging quiet, and, looking up to our native air, we think,—now shall we escape thee. Out on it! We rise not a hair’s breadth: we have the wings, it is true, but the feet are fettered. ”

“ The small spider she had captured, anxious to be free, was falling, falling earthward, but could not reach the surface. Leaning her shoulder a little forward, she placed the finger-tip against it, but lightly, scarcely touching, and moving continuously, with a motion rapid as that of a fluttering moth’s wing; while the spider, still paying out his line, remained suspended, rising and falling slightly at nearly the same distance from the ground. After a few moments she cried: “Drop down, little spider.” ”

“ The spider often spreads its web right across between two trees, the thread extending from the very top of the tree to the ground, while the insect springs up again in an instant from the earth, and travels aloft by the self-same thread, thus mounting at the same moment and spinning its threads. When its prey falls into its net, how on the alert it is, and with what readiness it runs to seize it! ”

“ MRS. GRABEM AND FUZ-BUZ.
MRS. GRABEM was a hairy spider who knit cobwebs and caught flies and brought up a small household of nine young spiders.
When I first knew this happy family, and learned all the wonderful things they heard and did, their home was as pretty a place as a spider need want. Their web was spun to and fro across the crotch of an old apple tree, and when they looked down they could see the green grass, and when they looked up they could see the great jolly red apples which must have looked to those young spiders just as the stars look to our own young folks. ”

“ The Spider comes and goes impetuously, as though at random; she goes up, comes down, goes up again, dives down again and each time strengthens the points of contact with intricate moorings distributed here and there. ”

“ If the Spider was here, I could tell him of some relatives that I met,—rough, hairy spiders, with fierce looks; soft, plump things that melt away almost at the touch; and others of gorgeous hues, that double themselves into cunning shapes to resemble flowers and buds. At last I came upon an army of Saüba ants, each one carrying a bit of green leaf daintily as a parasol. ”

“ When inclined to make these aërial excursions, the spider ascends some slight eminence, as the top of a wall, or the branch of a tree; and turning itself with its head towards the wind, protrudes several threads, and, rising from its station, commits itself to the gale, and is thus carried far beyond the height of the loftiest towers, and enjoys the pleasure of a clearer atmosphere. ”

“ The spider had already knit her spider's house into the larger one. All creatures played the carpenter and mason in building up for themselves their little islands in the infinite sea; but grovelling man looks not over his shoulder, and sees not that all is like him. ”

“ Maybe you're sitting over the fire of nights, and hear something stirring, and see a brown thing scuttling over the floor and you think it is a rat. It is not. It is the dead man's hand. Perhaps you hear a scratching on the wall, and look round, and see a great black spider—a monstrous spider going about, running over and over the wainscot, and touching and twitching at the bell wires. ”

“ The Spider sits in his labourd Web, eager watching for the Fly
5 Presently comes a famishd Bird & takes away the Spider
His Web is left all desolate, that his little anxious heart
So careful wove; & spread it out with sighs and weariness. ”

“ Whenever they come to the web of a smaller spider, whose larder seems well supplied, they rush upon his domain—pursue him to his hole—eat him up if they can—reject him if he is too tough for their maws, and quietly possess themselves of all the legs and wings they find dangling in his meshes: these spiders I call enemies—the world calls them lawyers! ”

“ When the Epeira, or Garden Spider, sees an insect entangled in her great upright web, she hastens up and covers the captive with corded meshes and silk ribbons by the armful, making all resistance impossible. ”

“ On every sunny morning monster spiders ran out from the holes and angles of the weir-frame, and spun webs across and across the straddling iron legs below the footbridge, right down to the lowered surface of the water, which had so sunk that each spider had at least four feet more of web than he could have reckoned upon before and waxed fat on the produce of the added superficies of enmeshed and immolated flies. ”

“ Everybody has seen a garden-spider trussing up a captured fly. It is held in the jaws and front legs and slowly revolved while with its hind legs the spider draws out bands of silk from the spinnerets and swathes it like a mummy. No silken rope, this, of fused or interwoven threads, but a broad band, every strand of which is separate and distinct and proceeds from a different spool. Two or three hundred fine threads wound simultaneously round the insect form a much more effectual winding sheet than would a single cord composed of them all. ”

“ THE SPIDER AND THE SPIDER-KILLER. In some of the isles of the Pacific, I have been told, it is not uncommon for a spider, while in the act of seizing and sucking the heart’s blood of a tender and juicy fly, to be himself pounced upon by a larger insect peculiar to the clime, having as keen a zest for raw spider as the spider has for fresh fly. Nature repeats itself in all its grades and conditions. Human spiders abound among my “bairns,” but then fortunately the spider-devourer occasionally crops up in the same class. ”

“ When it burst open, ever so many tiny baby spiders tumbled out, like birds from a nest, and ran along with her. Perhaps you did n't know that the spider can spin and sew, too? She spins her web, and she sews leaves together for her summer house."
"What a queer thing a spider is," said Carrie, beginning to forget her dislike. ”

“ I have succeeded with Bees and Wasps, but the murder has been committed at night and has taught me nothing. I would find both insects, next morning, reduced to a jelly under the Spider's mandibles. A weak prey is a mouthful which the Spider reserves for the calm of the night. ”

“ The spider has completed her beautiful work. Now she has taken her post in the middle of her web, her eight feet are placed upon its threads, and she watches for the slightest motion which is made by any insect that touches her web.—Now, my girl, can we suppose that God who made this insect, and gave her this surprising skill, will forget her, and leave her so that all her labour and pains will be useless! ”

“ Few spiders could hurt you seriously, but their bites paralyze flies and other small insects.
From the two to eight little eyes in her head, to the same number of spinnerets in her tail, from the deadly jaws to the sensitive, clawed and bristled and padded foot, the spider is a wonderful little creature. She is as clean as Mrs. Fly, washing her face and brushing her hairy body and legs vigorously. She keeps her web clean and every thread mended. And she cares for her babies as tenderly as a mother bird. ”

“ Note that the spider's body is of two regions, the head-thorax and the abdomen, and that it is supported by eight legs. To what part of the body are the legs attached? Find the feelers; if they are club-shaped, your specimen is a male. State their number and tell where they are attached. What is the sex of your spider? Usually there are eight tiny near-sighted eyes on the front of the head. State the color of the eyes and by a diagram indicate their arrangement. With what kind of material is the body covered (use the lens) ? What is the color of your specimen? What special markings has it? ”

“ Haven't you seen house-spiders let themselves down from ceilings by these silk cords? Once started a web thread seems to be pulled from the spinner as fast as she travels.
The spider is not an insect, as are the fly, the ant, the bee and butterfly. She has eight legs, while insects have but six. Her body is in two parts instead of three. Her legs are jointed like a lobster's, and like the lobster and crab she is a fierce fighter, and hunter. If a leg is torn off in a fight she is usually able to grow another one. ”

“ This spider, when it lets itself drop--for it has the same protective habit as the other--falls not so rapidly as a green freshly broken off leaf or as the green spider would fall, but with a slower motion, precisely like a leaf withered up till it has become almost light as a feather. ”

“ Bodies are twisted, elongated, inflated, flattened, truncated, covered with tubercles or spines, enclosed within chitinous plates, colored like bark, like lichens, like flowers of every imaginable hue, like bird droppings, like sand or stones, and in every one of these modifications there is doubtless an adaptation of the spider to its surroundings which, when it is studied out of its natural relations, we can only guess at. ”

“ It is a spider that trembles fixed
on the edge of a stone;
the abdomen on one side,
and on the other the head.
With so many feet the poor thing, and it cannot even then
make up its mind. And, seeing it today
stunned in such a difficulty,
it grieved me so to see this traveler.
It is an enormous spider, impeded by
its abdomen from following its head.
And I have thought of its eyes
and of its numerous feet...
And it grieved me so, this traveler!
This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content. ”

“ A spider, a living specimen of which may be easily procured, may be made a very instructive gallery lesson; it may prevent the fears and foolish prejudices against ugly yet harmless insects, which often remain through life. ”

“ As the filling is nearly completed, with the fore feet and jaws the surrounding earth is scraped for material, which she immediately proceeds to pack by a rhythmic tamping motion of the tail, until, at the end of five minutes, perhaps, the ground-level is finally reached, the surface smoothed, and no sign remains to mark the grave of the stupefied spider victim. ”

“ The hunting Spider is a small grey Spider, prettily bespeck'd with black spots all over its body, which the Microscope discovers to be a kind of feathers like those on Butterflies wings, or the body of the white Moth I lately describ'd. ”

“ Spiders form good subjects for a rainy-day study, and two hours spent in a neglected garret watching these clever little beings will often arouse such interest that we shall be glad to devote many days of sunshine to observing those species which hunt and build, and live their lives in the open fields. There is no insect in the world with more than six legs, and as a spider has eight he is therefore thrown out of the company of butterflies, beetles, and wasps and finds himself in a strange assemblage. ”

“ Now the garden-spider possesses eight eyes, and might be expected to see fairly well, but the experimenter will very soon come to the conclusion that the habitual use it makes of them—at all events in day-light—is very slight. Touch a web with a vibrating tuning-fork and the spider will rush to the spot and investigate the instrument with its fore-legs before distinguishing it from a fly. Remember, however, that this is only true of what are sometimes called sedentary spiders; species which hunt their prey have much better vision. ”

“ Spider. What's the matter, little Two-legs?
[Sits down by her on the tuffet. Miss Muffet puts down the curds and whey and rushes in to meet Nurse coming in L. with baby.
Nurse. What is it, darling? What's the matter?
Muffet. Oh, Nursie, it's a spider—the biggest you ever saw, and he came and sat down beside me and frightened me away.
Nurse [seeing Spider] . Oh! he is a monster.
Spider. Really, the manners of these two-legged persons!
Nurse. I'll soon chase it away. Shoo! Shoo! I'll stamp upon him if I get a chance. That will teach him to be a spider. ”

“ Clearly as the egg-laying time approaches the spider feels an irresistible blind impulse to perform in a definite order certain complicated actions. It is like a machine actuated by an internal spring, and in the spider’s case the internal spring is the inherited nervous mechanism we call instinct, which urges it to actions which it is not in the least necessary that it should understand. ”

“ The Spider sits in the middle, and at the least motion caused by a fly or other insect pressing against it, rushes on his prey, and sucks its juices; if, however, it should appear at all formidable, the Spider carefully encloses it in a shroud of web, which, of course, quite disables it ”

“ And this is what we should expect. A sedentary spider is informed of the whereabouts of its prey by the sense of touch, through the trembling of the web, but a wolf-spider spins no web and is dependent on the keenness of its vision. ”

“ As the spider went on into the place where all the people were gathered, they began to beat their drums and yell and scream and howl. The spider fell down as though he were dead, and kicked and squirmed. The big man was really scared, and he fell down dead. When they got up to the big man and found him dead, the spider told them how he had worked the big man, and saved their lives. ”

“ The Spider, which some call the catcher, or wolf, being beaten into a plaister, then sewed up in linen, and applied to the forehead and temples, prevents the return of the tertian.... There is another kind of Spider, which spins a white, fine, and thick web. ”