, the 'inner
leg;' the one outside the coil the 'outer leg.'

The latter draws the thread from the spinneret and passes it to the inner
leg, which, with a graceful movement, lays it on the radius crossed. At
the same time, the first leg measures the distance; it grips the last
coil placed in position and brings within a suitable range that point of
the radius whereto the thread is to be fixed. As soon as the radius is
touched, the thread sticks to it by its own glue. There are no slow
operations, no knots: the fixing is done of itself.

Meanwhile, turning by narrow degrees, the spinstress approaches the
auxiliary chords that have just served as her support. When, in the end,
these chords become too close, they will have to go; they would impair
the symmetry of the work. The Spider, therefore, clutches and holds on
to the rungs of a higher row; she picks up, one by one, as she goes
along, those which are of no more use to her and gathers them into a fine-
spun ball at the contact-point of the next spoke. Hence arises a series
of silky atoms marking the course of the disappearing spiral.

The light has to fall favourably for us to perceive these specks, the
only remains of the ruined auxiliary thread. One would take them for
grains of dust, if the faultless regularity of their distribution did not
remind us of the vanished spiral. They continue, still visible, until
the final collapse of the net.

And the Spider, without a stop of any kind, turns and turns and turns,
drawing nearer to the centre and repeating the operation of fixing her
thread at each spoke which she crosses. A good half-hour, an hour even
among the full-grown Spiders, is spent on spiral circles, to the number
of about fifty for the web of the Silky Epeira and thirty for those of
the Banded and the Angular Epeira.

At last, at some distance from the centre, on the borders of what I have
called the resting-floor, the Spider abruptly terminates her spiral when
the space would still allow of a certain number of turns. We shall see
the reason of this sudden stop presently. Next, the Epeira, no matter
which, young or old, hurriedly flings herself upon the little central
cushion, pulls it out and rolls it into a ball which I expected to see
thrown away. But no: her thrifty nature does not permit this waste. She
eats the cushion, at first an inaugural landmark, then a heap of bits of
thread; she once more melts in the digestive crucible what is