Thompson’s account is as follows: “The web of the garden spider—the most ingenious and perfect contrivance that can be imagined—is usually fixed in a perpendicular or somewhat oblique direction, in an opening between the leaves of some plant or shrub; and as it is obvious that round its whole extent lines will be required to which those ends of radii that are farthest from the centre can be attached, the construction of those exterior lines is the spider’s first operation. It seems careless about the shape of the area they are to enclose, well aware that it can as readily inscribe a circle in a triangle as a square; and in this respect it is guided by the distance or proximity of the points to which it can attach them. It spares no pains, however, to strengthen and keep them in a proper degree of tension. With the former view it composes each line of five or six, or even of more threads, glued together; and with the latter it fixes to them from different points a numerous and intricate apparatus of smaller threads; and having thus completed the foundation of its snare, it proceeds to fill up the outline. Attaching a thread to one of the main lines, it walks along it, guiding it with one of its hind legs, that it may not touch in any part and be prematurely glued, and crosses over to the opposite side, where, by applying its spinners, it firmly fixes it. To the middle of this diagonal thread which is to form the centre of its net, it fixes a second, which, in like manner, it conveys and fastens to another part of the lines including the area. The work now proceeds rapidly. During the preliminary operations it sometimes rests, as though its plan required meditation; but no sooner are the marginal lines of the net firmly stretched, and two or three radii spun from its centre, than it continues its labour so quickly and unremittingly that the eye can scarcely follow its process. The radii, to the number of about twenty, giving the net the appearance of a wheel, are speedily finished. It then proceeds to the centre, quickly turns itself round, pulls each thread with its feet, to ascertain its strength, breaking any one that seems defective, and replacing it by another. Next it glues immediately round the centre five or six small concentric circles, distant about half a line from each other, and then four or five larger ones each separated by the space of half an inch or more. These last serve as a sort of temporary scaffolding to walk over, and to keep the radii properly stretched, while it glues to them the concentric circles that are to remain, which it now proceeds to construct. Placing itself at the circumference, and fastening its thread to the end of one of the radii, it walks up that one towards the centre to such a distance as to draw the thread from its body of a sufficient length to meet the next. Then stepping across and conducting the thread with one of its hind legs, it glues it with its spinners to the point in the adjoining radius