In the year 1709, M. Bon, of Montpellier, communicated to the Royal Academy of that city a discovery which he had made of a new kind of silk, from the very fine threads with which several species of Spiders (probably the _Aranea diadema_ and others closely allied to it) inclose their eggs; which threads were found to be much stronger than those composing the Spider’s web. They were easily separated, carded, and spun, and then afforded a much finer thread than that of the silk-worm, but, according to Reaumur, inferior to this both in luster and strength. They were also found capable of receiving all the different dyes with equal facility. M. Bon carried his experiments so far as to obtain two or three pairs of stockings and gloves of this silk, which were of an elegant gray color, and were presented, as samples, to the Academy. As the Spiders also were much more prolific, and much more hardy than silk-worms, great expectations were formed of benefit of the discovery. Reaumur accordingly took up and prosecuted the inquiry with zeal. He computed that 663,522 Spiders would scarcely furnish a single pound of silk; and conceived that it would be impossible to provide the necessarily immense numbers with flies, their natural food. This obstacle, however, was soon removed, by his finding that they would subsist very well upon earth-worms chopped, and upon the soft ends or roots of feathers. But a new obstacle arose from their unsocial propensities, which proved insurmountable; for though at first they seemed to feed quietly, and even work together, several of them at the same web, yet they soon began to quarrel, and the strongest devoured the weakest, so that of several hundred, placed together in a box, but three or four remained alive after a few days; and nobody could propose to keep and feed each separately. The silk was found to be naturally of different colors; particularly white, yellow, gray, sky-blue, and coffee-colored brown.[1232] A Spider raiser in France, more recently, is said to have tamed eight hundred Spiders, which he kept in a single apartment for their silk.[1233] De Azara states that in Paraguay a Spider forms a spherical cocoon for its eggs, an inch in diameter, of a yellow silk, which the inhabitants spin on account of the permanency of the color.[1234] The ladies of Bermuda make use of the silk of the Silk-Spider, _Epeira clavipes_, for sewing purposes.[1235] The Spider-web fabric has been carried so nearly to transparency (in Hindostan) that the Emperor Aurengzebe is said to have reproved his daughter for the indelicacy of her costume, while she wore as many as seven thicknesses of it.[1236] Astronomers employ the strongest thread of Spiders, the one, namely, that supports the web, for the divisions of the micrometer. By its ductility this thread acquires about a fifth of its ordinary length.[1237] Topsel, in his History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, has the following, which he calls an “old and common verse: