Hill. But, when I was at the North in February, 1865, a friend expressed
to me his confident belief that this new silken product could be made of
practical utility, and advised me to make inquiries on the subject. So,
before presenting it to the scientific societies, I tested the strength
of the silk by attaching to a fixed point one end of a thread _one
four-thousandth_ of an inch in diameter, and tying the other end upon
the arm of an accurate balance: weights were then dropped in to the
amount of _fifty-four grains_ before the line was broken. By a
calculation from this, a solid bar of spider's silk, one inch in
diameter, would sustain a weight of more than _seventy tons_; while a
similar bar of steel will sustain only fifty-six, and one of iron
twenty-eight tons. The specimens were then exhibited to Professors
Wyman, Agassiz, and Cooke, of Harvard University, to all of whom the
species of spider was unknown, though Professor Wyman has since found a
single specimen among some insects collected at the South; while to them
as well as to the silk-manufacturers the idea of reeling silk directly
from a living insect was entirely new. The latter, of course, wished to
see a quantity of it before pronouncing upon its usefulness. So most of
my furlough was spent in making arrangements for securing a number of
the spiders, and reeling their silk during the coming summer. These
comprised six light wooden boxes with sliding fronts, each eighteen
inches wide and high and one foot deep, and containing six tin trays one
above another, each of which, again, held twenty-four square paper boxes
two and a half inches in diameter, and with lids closed by an elastic.
Into these the spiders were to be put for transportation. Then I had
made a costly machine for reeling the silk, which, however, proved of no
practical value.

In March, with these and other real or fancied adjuvants, (some of which
proved even less useful and trustworthy than the machine,) but, above
all, with a determination to put this matter to the test of actual
experiment, I rejoined the regiment at Charleston, which had just fallen
into our hands. It was not until April, however, that we were so
situated that I could make any attempt to get spiders. Of course it was
not expected that the full-grown ones should be found at that season,
but the eggs or young should be abundant where the spiders had been in
the summer.

Before recounting my adventures in pursuit of my