n 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
m