in the way of spinning—the familiar circular snare or wheel-web of the garden spider. CHAPTER III THE CIRCULAR SNARE Select the most perfect circular snare at hand, and examine it attentively. In the autumn, when the large garden-spider, _Epeira diademata_ (fig. 2 _A_), is mature, it will probably be easy to find such a snare a foot or more in diameter. It is stretched within an irregular frame of _foundation lines_ of extra thickness and strength, and consists of a large number of radii or spokes connected by what appear to be a series of concentric circles, in reality a continuous spiral, like the hair-spring of a watch. The central portion is different from the rest of the wheel. Probably in the very centre there is a vacant space and round this a hub, consisting of a spiral line different in appearance from that of the main spiral. It does not leave a radius exactly at the point where it strikes it, and the rather zig-zag effect has caused it to be known as the “notched zone.” Touch the web and it adheres to the finger, but all its lines are not adhesive. Test this with some fine-pointed implement, and the foundation lines, the radii and the notched zone will give negative results; the spiral line alone is viscid, and its viscidity is due to the presence of thousands of little beads of gummy matter strung on a thin elastic thread. The vast number and uniformity of these beads—estimated at 120,000 on a large web—excited the wonder and admiration of naturalists until it was proved that they were not deposited by the spider as beads at all, but as a uniform coating of viscid matter which subsequently arranged itself into equidistant globules easily explicable by the physicist. Indeed precisely the same phenomenon is seen on a dew-laden web, where similar but very much larger beads of water decorate all the lines. From the hub of the wheel we shall very likely notice a rather stout cable diverging from the plane of the snare and leading to a nest of leaves spun together. Here the spider is to be found when not on duty in the centre of the wheel, and here it constructs its egg-cocoons. This, then, is the complete circular snare, but we shall understand it much better if we watch the spider at work in its construction. [Illustration: Fig. 2. _A_, the Garden Spider. _B_, diagram of a sector of the snare. _f_, foundation line; _r_, radius; _v.s_, viscid spiral; _n.z_, notched zone; _h_, hub.]