When the Epeira cannot manage a fall of sufficient depth to give her the
double line with its loop to be fixed at a distance, she employs another
method. She lets herself down and then climbs up again, as we have
already seen; but, this time, the thread ends suddenly in a filmy hair-
pencil, a tuft, whose parts remain disjoined, just as they come from the
spinneret's rose. Then this sort of bushy fox's brush is cut short, as
though with a pair of scissors, and the whole thread, when unfurled,
doubles its length, which is now enough for the purpose. It is fastened
by the end joined to the Spider; the other floats in the air, with its
spreading tuft, which easily tangles in the bushes. Even so must the
Banded Epeira go to work when she throws her daring suspension-bridge
across a stream.
Once the cable is laid, in this way or in that, the Spider is in
possession of a base that allows her to approach or withdraw from the
leafy piers at will. From the height of the cable, the upper boundary of
the projected works, she lets herself slip to a slight depth, varying the
points of her fall. She climbs up again by the line produced by her
descent. The result of the operation is a double thread which is unwound
while the Spider walks along her big foot-bridge to the contact-branch,
where she fixes the free end of her thread more or less low down. In
this way, she obtains, to right and left, a few slanting cross-bars,
connecting the cable with the branches.
These cross-bars, in their turn, support others in ever-changing
directions. When there are enough of them, the Epeira need no longer
resort to falls in order to extract her threads; she goes from one cord
to the next, always wire-drawing with her hind-legs and placing her
produce in position as she goes. This results in a combination of
straight lines owning no order, save that they are kept in one, nearly
perpendicular plane. They mark a very irregular polygonal area, wherein
the web, itself a work of magnificent regularity, shall presently be
woven.
It is unnecessary to go over the construction of the masterpiece again;
the younger Spiders have taught us enough in this respect. In both
cases, we see the same equidistant radii laid, with a central landmark
for a guide; the same auxiliary spiral, the scaffolding of temporary
rungs, soon doomed to disappear; the same snaring-spiral, with its maze
of closely-woven coils. Let us pass on: other details call for our
attention.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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