Cornell Nature-Study Leaflets: Being a selection, with revision, from the teachers' leaflets, home nature-study lessons, junior naturalist monthlies and other publications from the College of Agriculture, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., 1896-1904New York State College of Agriculture
History
Cornell Nature-Study Leaflets: Being a selection, with revision, from the teachers' leaflets, home nature-study lessons, junior naturalist monthlies and other publications from the College of Agriculture, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., 1896-1904
New York State College of Agriculture
Natural history; Nature study
The use of spiders in nature-study does not have to do with handling
living specimens, but rather with the habits of the different species
and the building of the webs. In catching spiders to bring into the
schoolroom, use the method indicated by Professor Kellogg in
Nature-Study Lessons. Capture the specimen by the use of a pill box:
take the box in one hand and the cover in the other, and catch the
spider by suddenly closing the box over it.
The pupils should be made to observe the chief differences between
spiders and insects; _i. e._, spiders have two regions of the body
instead of three as in insects; eight legs instead of six, simple eyes
instead of compound. Compare spiders with daddy-long-legs.
If the teacher chooses to kill a specimen and show the arrangement of
the eyes and the spinnerets under the microscope, she may do so. This is
not necessary, although I have seen it done successfully in the sixth
grade. Diagrams and blackboard drawings may be used instead of the
microscope.
Let the pupils observe the uses of silk by the spider:
1. Snare for prey. 2. To enwrap prey when first entangled. 3. Nests for
eggs. 4. Lining for habitations. 5. Means of locomotion.
Introduce the grass spider into the schoolroom in glass jars containing
grass sod, and let the pupils observe it at work.
Encourage a study of cobwebs. Capture the owner of an orb web, and bring
it in a glass jar to the schoolroom. Try to give it its natural
environment; _i. e._, some sort of frame or branch of tree on which it
may fasten its web.
The orb web: 1. How is it made? 2. Of how many kinds of silk? 3. The way
the spiral thread is arranged as shown by drawings. 4. The position of
the spider on the web. 5. The way the spider passes from one side of the
web to the other. 6. The way it treats its prey when the victim is once
entangled.
The engineering ability shown in making this web is one of the most
marvelous things in all the realm of animal life. These observations may
well cover two months of this term.
Study the ballooning spiders, the jumping spiders, the running spiders,
and the crab spiders. Study as many egg-sacs of spiders as possible.
Another topic for study during the fall term is the Songs of Insects.
Insect Life, p. 235. Bring in the katydids, crickets, and meadow
grasshoppers, place them in cages containing green sod, and observe them
while they are singing. Note that only the males sing. Show the ears of
the crickets, katydids, and meadow grasshoppers in the elbows of their
front legs. The ear of the grasshopper is on the side of the segment of
the abdomen next to the thorax. Ways of the Six-Footed, pp. 3-27.
Study snowy tree cricket. Manual for Study of Insects, p. 118.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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