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The Spider (Spider's touch how exquisitely)

↓ The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!

Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.

Pope.

ONE of the largest of the European spiders is the Aranca diadema of Linnæus, which is extremely common in our own country, and is chiefly seen during the atumnal season, in gardens, &c. The body of this species, when full grown, is not much inferior in size to a small hazel-nut: the abdomen is beautifully marked by a longitudinal series of round or drop-shaped milk-white spots, crossed by others of similar appearance, so as to represent, in some degree, the pattern of a small diadem. This spider, in the months of September and October, forms, in some convenient spot or shelter, a large round close or thick web of yellow silk, in which it deposits its eggs, guarding the round web with a secondary one of a looser texture. The young are hatched in the ensuing May, the parent insects dying towards the close of autumn. The aranea diadema being one of the largest of the common spiders, serves to exemplify some of the principal characters of the genus in a clearer manner than most others. At the tip of the abdomen are placed five papillæ, or teats, through which the insect draws its thread; and as each of these papillæ is furnished with a vast number of foramina or outlets, disposed over its whole surface, it follows, that what we commonly term a spider's thread, is in reality formed of a collection of a great many distinct ones; the animal possessing the power of drawing out more or fewer at pleasure; and if it should draw from all the foramina at once, the thread might consist of many hundred distinct filaments. The eyes, which are situated on the upper part or front of the thorax, are eight in number, placed at a small distance from each other, and have the appearance of the stemmata in the generality of insects. The fangs, or piercers, with which the animal wounds its prey, are strong, curved, sharp-pointed, and each furnished on the inside, near the tip, with a small oblong hole or slit, through which is injected a poisonous fluid into the wound made by the point itself, these organs operating in miniature on the same principle with the fangs in poisonous serpents M ラ