The construction of the cross-threads between the spokes of the web is always commenced at the extreme outer edges of the space to be filled; and the spider works inwardly, carrying the thread round and round from spoke to spoke until she arrives within half an inch or so of the central small spiral. But the two are never joined: an interval is always left where the web consists of nothing but bare radiating lines. The snare is now finished. The spider takes up her station in the middle of the net, with no more to do for the rest of the day but take what fair chance, and her own crafty ingenuity, may provide. Yet, having thus watched the making of a spider-web from start to finish, and having noted all the details of construction here set down, there is something more about the matter which, if it escape the observer, will leave him in the rather disgraceful plight of having missed the most wonderful thing of all. The spider’s snare is not woven throughout of the same kind of thread. Two kinds are used, and the difference between them is apparent even to eyes of very moderate power. While the triangle and the radiating lines are made of plain silk, the cross-threads are corrugated, and look like strings of tiny, transparent beads. A touch of the finger will prove that these beads are really adhering drops of some glutinous fluid, whose use is not difficult to guess. But how do the beads get on the line, seeing that this, when first drawn from the spider’s body, is visibly nothing but a plain filament of silk, like the rest of the web? The question has been asked many times, and the answer commonly given is, I have come to believe, an entirely erroneous one. We are told that the thread used for the cross-bars in a spider’s web, when it first emerges from the creature’s body, is only smeared, not beaded with the gluten; but that after attaching each segment of the spiral to the spokes, the spider gives it a twang with her foot, thus causing the gluten to separate into beads. Here then is a fact such as one would read in the nature books, and unquestionably accept. But a little independent experiment with various kinds of strings, elastic or non-elastic, and smeared with different glutinous substances, reveals the fact that no amount of twanging will induce the latter to divide into beads, such as one sees in the spider line. In every case, the tendency of the gluten in the experiment is to fly off altogether, or to gather to one side of the string.