till to be seen
descending from above, and twinkling like stars in the sun, so as
to draw the attention of the most incurious. The flakes of the web
on this occasion hung so thick upon the hedges and trees, that
basketsful might have been collected. No one doubts (he observes)
but that these webs are the production of small spiders.

These aerial spiders are of two sizes, although of the same colour
and general appearance; they are probably male and female. At all
events they do not vary in size more than other species of spiders
when the sexes differ.

Has it been observed by naturalists that spiders eat their own
webs? A large one that I used to feed when I was a lad with wasps,
humble bees, and flesh-flies, used to do so occasionally. These
insects were so strong that they often ruined the web in their
efforts to escape, and the spider, quite aware of the rough
customers it had to deal with, would often coil a cable of many
folds round them before venturing to seize them with its
mandibles. It would, if the web was ruined by the struggles of the
insect, deliberately gorge it, which I accounted for by supposing
that unless it did so it would not be able to secrete a sufficient
supply of material to enable it to spin another.

The leaping spiders are another curious species, which construct
no webs, although they spin threads. This spider may be seen
frequently on the walls of houses, and if carefully watched it
will be seen to range up and down in quest of small gnats and
other insects; when it observes one it creeps to within about two
inches of it, and backing slightly, it appears to hesitate for a
moment, and then springs upon the fly, but always before doing so
it fixes a thread to the spot from whence it springs, so that if
the fly happens to be too strong for it, and is able to detach
itself from the wall, they both remain suspended from the thread
which has been previously fixed by the spider. This I have seen
more than once.

They sometimes venture on larger game than the small gnats. One I
was watching one day came upon one of the large _Ephemera_ (the
Browndrake), an insect ten times as large as the spider, but after
many points (for the setting of the spider before it springs is
very similar in manner to that of a thoroughbred pointer [17]), in
which it kept varying its position, apparently to gain some
advantage, it gave up the attempt, discretion proving the better
part of valour.

When botanizin