The anterior spinneret (that nearest the head end of the animal) is a sort of cone, divided into a large basal joint and a small terminal joint. The latter bears on its inner side a single spigot (fig. 12 _a_) and is crowned with a battery of spools, about a hundred in number. The median spinneret has three spigots, two at the tip and one on the inner side (fig. 12 _b_), and about a hundred spools, mostly on its inner surface. The posterior spinneret is divided very obliquely into two joints, so that the terminal joint extends much lower down on the inner than on the outer side. It has five spigots in groups of three and two, and again there are about a hundred spools. Now the point that I wish to make clear is that there is no interweaving of the output of these various spools and spigots. At the moment of emission the threads are adhesive, and can be made to stick to the glass or to one another, but they are not in any sense either fused or interwoven. For ordinary operations the brunt of the work is borne by the spigots marked _a_ in the figure, sometimes reinforced by silk from the spigots on the median spinnerets marked _b_, the functions of all the other spools and spigots being special and occasional. For instance, when Epeira is laying down a foundation line, this is what happens. The spider sits down, so to speak, on a twig, separating its spinnerets and rubbing them on the surface. As it raises its abdomen a multitude of little threads are seen merging into what appears to be a single line. [Illustration: Fig. 12. View, from the inner side, of one of each of the three spinnerets of _Epeira_. _A_, anterior; _B_, median; _C_, posterior spinneret.] In reality the line is double, emerging from the spigots (_a_) on the anterior spinnerets, and it can easily be separated into two—and two only—any where along its length. The multitudinous spools have emitted short lengths of silk to anchor the foundation line at its commencement, but they are then closed and have no share in the ever-lengthening line as the spider lets itself drop or crawls away to attach it to a new spot. One of their uses, then, is to anchor the main lines from the spigots to external objects, but they have another function not less important. Everybody has seen a garden-spider trussing up a captured fly. It is held in the jaws and front legs and slowly revolved while with its hind legs the spider draws out bands of silk from the spinnerets and swathes it like a mummy. No silken rope, this, of fused or interwoven threads, but a broad band, every strand of which is separate and distinct and proceeds from a different spool. Two or three hundred fine threads wound simultaneously round the insect form a much more effectual winding sheet than would a single cord composed of them all.