When one has a Garden Spider in a bottle, it may be observed to practise a curious and very effective method of disabling its prey. If a bluebottle or any other large fly be dropped and entangled among the threads, the spider will envelop it in a sheet of web. This is how Blackwall describes the operation: ‘Causing the victim to rotate by the action of the third pair of legs and the palps, the first pair of legs also being frequently employed in a similar manner, they extend the spinners laterally, and applying to them alternately the _sustentaculum_ of each posterior leg, they seize and draw out numerous fine lines in the form of a fillet, which they attach to their revolving prey, and thus involve it in a dense covering of silk from one extremity to the other. By means of this stratagem they are capable of overcoming formidable and powerful insects, such as wasps, bees, and even large beetles[32].’ The operation does not occupy much time; in a very few minutes the fly is swathed in a silky covering as completely as an Egyptian mummy in its linen folds. Of course resistance, much less attack, is out of the question, and when it is thus rendered powerless for harm the spider proceeds with its meal. The _sustentac´ulum_--or support--is a strong movable spine near the end of the tarsus, on the under side of each of the last pair of legs. These spines act in opposition to the claws, and thus these animals are enabled to hold with a firm grasp such lines as they have occasion to draw from their spinners with the feet of the hind legs, and such also as they design to attach themselves to.