"Now the wire is drawn through these holes; beginning at the larger ones, and passing every time through the next smaller one, it stretches the wire out, until it becomes as small as the workman wishes it to be. "The spider is a wire-drawer, too; for it has a contrivance to draw out its threads, and make them smaller or larger, as it pleases. If you will look at a very large spider, you can see with your naked eye, just at the end of its body, four, and sometimes six, little knobs like teats, with a circle around them. These are its spinners. Each one of these small knobs, inside of that circle, is so full of little holes or tubes, that Mr. Reaumur (of whom I told you before, you will recollect) calculated that a place no larger than the point of a pin had a thousand of these little holes in it. These holes are sometimes so very small, that another gentleman,[8] who looked at spiders through a microscope very often, thought it would take four millions of the threads which came through those holes to make one thread as thick as a hair of his beard. Here is a picture of a spider hanging by a thread coming out of its spinner, or, as it is sometimes called, its spinneret." [Illustration] "Then, Uncle Philip, the spider does not spin its thread all at once?" "No, boys. Fine as you see that thread to be, it is not one single line, but it is made of many thousands joined together. The spiders have little bags of gum within their bodies, near their spinners, and out of these they draw the threads: when they have come out about the tenth part of an inch, they join them all into one with their claws; and they can shut their spinners when they please, so as to make the threads longer or shorter; and they can break them off, too, when they wish." "But, Uncle Philip, we do not see why there should be so many threads to make up one." "I cannot exactly tell you, boys, why there are so many; but probably to make the thread dry quicker, by letting the air touch so many parts of it: and I expect, too, the thread is stronger, because we know that in two pieces of cord of one size, if one is made of several smaller cords put together, it will be stronger than the other, which was spun all at once. The following is a picture of the spider's spinnerets, and some of the threads as it appears through the microscope; only you must recollect that _all_ the threads are not drawn: there are a great many more than you see in the picture." [Illustration: Spider's Threads coming from the Spinnerets.] FOOTNOTE: [8] Leuwenhoek. CONVERSATION VIII. _Uncle Philip tells the Children of a Door, with a Hinge and Spring to it, made by a Spider; and shows them Pictures to let them see the Difference between God's Work and Man's._