Rather more than fifty years ago, it seemed as if a new and important trade was about to be inaugurated by the rearing of spiders for their silk, which the Society of Arts marked with their approval by awarding a medal to a Mr Rolt for his success in obtaining an appreciable quantity from the Garden spider. This gentleman accomplished his purpose by connecting a reel with a steam-engine, setting it revolving at the rate of one hundred and fifty feet per minute; when, after two hours’ patience, he wound off eighteen thousand feet of beautiful white line of a metallic lustre from twenty-four spiders. Subsequent examination proved this thread to be only the thirty-thousandth part of an inch in diameter, so that a single pound-weight was estimated to be sufficient to encircle the globe. Although this gentleman appears not to have pushed his interesting experiments much further, a Frenchman of Languedoc afterwards established a factory for producing and weaving spider-silk into articles of utility. He manufactured gloves and stockings which were much admired; but the difficulty of rearing a sufficiently numerous family of spinners within a reasonable space, on account of their extreme pugnacity, soon interfered with this budding industry, and led to its abandonment. No difficulty was experienced by M. Reaumur in collecting some five thousand spiders and immuring them in fifty separate cells; but unfortunately, on one occasion there occurred a scarcity of flies; a food-panic ensued, and the hungry and infuriated prisoners, escaping during the night, fell upon one another with such deadly ferocity, that when the anxious proprietor paid his usual morning visit, only a few gorged and bloated specimens survived. It seemed, indeed, so vain to expect European spiders to exist peacefully within sight and reach of each other without their usual employment conducted after their own fashion, that the hope of rendering them useful for commercial purposes gradually died away, and has for many years been almost wholly relinquished. Certain species of foreign spiders, however, when examined with a view to their silk, offer a field of very considerable encouragement. In the island of Ceylon there is one described by Sir Samuel Baker as being two inches long, with a large yellow spot upon its back, which spins a beautiful yellow web two and a half feet in diameter, so strong that an ordinary walking-stick thrown in is entangled, and retained among the meshes. As might be expected, the filament, which is said to exhibit a more silky appearance than common spider’s web, is easily wound by hand on a card, without any special care being exercised in the operation. A spider of even more formidable dimensions is alluded to in the fascinating work, _The Gardens of the Sun_, by Mr F. W. Burbidge. It is a large, black, yellow-spotted creature, measuring six or eight inches across its extended legs, and it spins a web strained on lines as stout as fine sewing-cotton.