a loom, the industrious craftswoman started
at the middle, and began the task of putting in the cross-pieces or
weft which were to complete and bind together the circular pattern.
These she wove round and round in a continuous spiral, setting out at
the centre, and keeping on in ever-widening circlets, till she arrived
at last at the exterior or foundation threads. How she fastened these
cross-pieces to the ray-lines I could never quite make out, though I
often followed the work closely from inside through the pane of glass
with a platyscopic lens; for, strange to say, the spiders were not in
the least disturbed by being watched at their work, and never took the
slightest notice of anything that went on at the other side of the
window. My impression is, however, that she gummed them together,
letting them harden into one as they dried; for the thread itself is
always semi-liquid when first exuded.

The cross-pieces, we observed from the very beginning, were invariably
covered by little sparkling drops of something wet and beadlike, which
at first in our ignorance we took for dew; for until I began
systematically observing Lucy and Eliza, I will frankly confess I had
never paid any particular attention to the spider-kind with the
solitary exception of my old winter friends, the trap-door spiders of
the Mediterranean shores. But, after a little experience, we soon found
out that these pearly drops on the web were not dew at all, but a
sticky substance, akin, to that of the web, secreted by the animals
themselves from their own bodies. We also quickly discovered, coming to
the observation as we did with minds unbiased by previous knowledge,
that the viscid liquid in question was of the utmost importance to the
spiders in securing their prey, and that unfortunate insects were not
merely entangled but likewise gummed down or glued by it, like birds in
bird-lime or flies in treacle. So necessary is the sticky stuff,
indeed, to the success of the trap, that Lucy and Eliza used to renew
the entire set of cross-pieces in the web every morning, and thus
ensure from day to day a perfectly fresh supply of viscid fluid; but,
so far as I could see, they only renewed the rays and the
foundation-threads under stress of necessity, when the snare had been
so greatly injured by large insects struggling in it, or by the wind or
the gardener, as to render repairs absolutely unavoidable. The whole
structure, when complete, is so beautiful an