_Epeira caudata_, a common gray spider, living in the wood, collects pieces of insects and other rubbish, and arranges it in a line up and down, across the centre of the web. The spider stands in the centre, and from a short distance can hardly be distinguished from the rubbish. She also hides her cocoons in the web, in the same line of dirt. The size of the web is usually proportioned to that of the spider; but _Epeira displicata_, which is quarter of an inch long, makes a web only two or three inches in diameter, on the ends of branches of bushes, where it is shaken about, and sometimes blown to pieces, by the wind. As the spider stands in her web, and feels a slight shake, such as would be caused by a sudden wind, she draws her legs together, pulling the rays tighter, and so making the whole web steady. If, however, the spider is frightened, and has no time to escape, she throws her body back and forth as a man does in a swing, and thus shakes the web so rapidly, that the spider can hardly be seen. The most usual habit, when alarmed, is to drop to the ground, and lie there as if dead. USE OF SPIDER’S SILK. Various attempts have been made to use the silk of spiders, and chiefly that of the large round-web spiders, for practical purposes, either by carding the cocoons, or by drawing the thread directly from the spider. The latest experiments and plans for this purpose are those of Professor Wilder in “The Galaxy,” vol. viii. He shows how _Nephila plumipes_ might be raised in large numbers, each spider kept by herself in a wire ring surrounded by water, fed with flies bred for the purpose from old meat, and milked every day of their thread. Each cocoon of this spider contains from five hundred to a thousand eggs. The young live together for two or three weeks, spin a web in common, and eat one another, or any small insects that come in their way. Then they begin to scatter, and each builds her own web; so that from this time they must be kept separate, or they would eat one another. Every day or two, each spider should be taken down, put into a pair of stocks, and the thread pulled out till it stops coming. In this way Wilder thinks an ounce of thread could be got from each spider during the summer. The thread is from a seven-thousandth to a four-thousandth of an inch thick, and much smoother and more brightly colored, as well as finer, than that of the silk-worm. Several threads would have to be twisted together to get one of manageable size. The principal difficulties are the space needed for keeping each spider by herself, and the amount of labor needed to provide them with living insects for food, and to draw out the silk, which would make it too expensive to use. CURLED WEBS.