The instinct of spiders in at once attacking a vital part of their antagonist--as in the case of a theridion butchering a cockroach by first binding its legs and then biting the neck--is most remarkable; but they do not always have it their own way. A certain species of mason wasp selects a certain spider as food for its larvæ, and, entombing fifteen or sixteen in a tunnel of mud, fastens them down in a paralyzed state as food for the prospective grubs. Perhaps the most entertaining points in connection with spiders are their concentration of energy, their amazing rapidity of action, and their inscrutable methods of transition and flotation. During the past autumn large numbers of these creatures appeared at intervals. Thus I observed a vast network of lines that seemed to have descended over the town of Whitstable, in Kent, and which were not visible the day before or the day after. Many were fifteen to twenty feet long; they stretched from house to lamppost, from tree to tree, from bush to bush; and within six or seven feet of the ground I counted, in a garden, twenty-four or more parallel strands. The rapidity with which spiders work may be gathered from the fact that, while moving about in my room, I found their lines strung from the very books I had, a moment before, been using. Insect life, as might have been expected after so mild a winter and so dry a spring and summer, is (1896) intensely exuberant. The balance is preserved by a corresponding number of Arachnida. On May 25 and 26 the east wall of the vicarage of Burgh-by-sands was coated with a tissue of web so delicate that it required a very close scrutiny to detect it. I could find none of the spinners. Every square inch of the building appeared coated with filmy lines, crossing in places, but mostly horizontal, from north to south. Walking by the edge of a wheatfield in Suffolk on May 14, I observed all over the path, which was cracked with the drought, dark objects flitting to and fro. They were spiders--mostly of the hunting order. Tens of thousands must have occupied a moderate space of the field, and the cracks in the parched soil afforded them a handy retreat. In reference to the visitation of spiders at Whitstable during the autumn and winter of 1895-6, it is right to note that the people of that place regard them as a sign of an east wind. In this connection we can note the fact of the phenomenal clouds of flies occurring at times on the east coast of England; and it would be interesting if observers could ascertain whether spiders ever cross the Channel and accompany such visitations of insects. The production of the flotation line, and its method of attachment, are the two points to which I ask the attention of observers.