circles. She starts from the end of the first spiral, near the outside of the web.

What follows is hard to observe, for the movements are very quick and jerky, consisting of a series of sudden little rushes, sways, and bends that bewilder the eye. The two hind legs, the weaving implements, keep going constantly. One draws out the thread from the spinneret and passes it to the other, which lays it on the radius. As soon as the radius is touched, the thread sticks to it by its own glue.

The spider, without a stop of any kind, turns and turns and turns, drawing nearer to the center and always fixing her thread at each spoke which she crosses. At last, at some distance from the center, on the edge of what I have called the resting-floor, the spider suddenly ends her spiral. She next eats the little cushion in the center, which is a mat of ends of saved silk. She does this to economize silk, for after she has eaten it the cushion will be turned into silk for the next web she spins.

The spiral part of the garden spider's web is a wonderful contrivance. The thread that forms it may be seen with the naked eye to be different from that of the framework and the spokes. It glitters in the sun and looks as though it were knotted. I cannot examine it through the microscope outdoors because the web shakes so, but by passing a sheet of glass under the web and lifting it I can take away a few pieces of thread to study. The microscope now shows me an astounding sight.

Those threads so slender as to be almost invisible, are very closely twisted twine, something like the gold cord of officers' sword knots. Moreover, they are hollow. They contain a sticky moisture resembling a strong solution of gum arabic. I can see it trickling from the broken ends. This moisture must ooze through the threads, making them sticky. Indeed, they are sticky. When I lay a straw flat upon them, it adheres at once. We see now that the garden spider hunts, not with springs, but with sticky snares that catch everything, down to

the dandelion plume that barely brushes against the web. Nevertheless, the spider herself is not caught in her own snare. Why?

For one thing, she spends most of her time on her resting-floor in the middle of the web, which the spiral does not enter. The resting-floor is not at all sticky, as I find when I pass a straw against it. But sometimes when a victim is caught, perhaps right at the end of the web, the spider has to rush up quickly to bind it and overcome its attempts to free itself. She seems to be able to walk upon her network perfectly well then. Has she something on her feet which makes them slip over the glue? Has she perhaps oiled them? Oil, you know, is the best thing to prevent surfaces from sticking.

I pull out the leg of a live spider and put it to soak for an hour in disulphide of carbon, which dissolves fat. I wash it carefully with a brush dipped in the same fluid. When the washing is finished, the leg sticks to the spiral of the web! We see now that the spider varnishes herself with a special sweat so that she can go on any part of her web without difficulty. However, she does not wish to remain on the spiral too long, or the oil might wear away, so most of the time she stays on her safe resting-floor.

This spiral thread of the spider's is very quick to absorb moisture, as I find out by experiment. For this reason the garden spiders, when they weave their webs in the early morning, leave that part of the work unfinished, if the air turns misty. They build the general framework, they lay the spokes, they make the resting-floor, for all these parts are not affected by excess moisture; but they are very careful not to work at the sticky spiral, which, if soaked by the fog, would dissolve into sticky threads and lose its usefulness by being wet. The net that was started will be finished tomorrow, if the weather is right. But on hot days this property of the spiral is a fine thing; it does not dry up, but absorbs all the moisture in the atmosphere and remains, at the most scorching times of day, supple, elastic, and more

and more sticky. What bird catcher could compete with the garden spider in the art of laying snares? And all this industry and cunning for the capture of a moth!

Abridged

"The Building of the Spider's Web" is translated from the French of Jean Henri Fabre. As a record of accurate observation it is unexcelled in literature.

1. Make a drawing of the web, adding thread by thread as the story grows.

2.

Why does the spider make the web?

3. How does the spider make a thread?

4. Why do flies stick to the thread?

5. Why can the spider travel over the web without sticking to it?

6. Consider whether you can see the interesting behavior of the spider as accurately as Fabre does. What insects have you watched closely?

THE STORY OF THE CERATINA FAMILY 1

ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK

Try out your rate of silent reading on this selection. The method is described on page 133. The story contains approximately 2100 words. When you make such a test of your ability, you should make sure beforehand that conditions will be favorable. Choose a time and a place, so that you will not be disturbed from the beginning to the end of the trial.

A BRANCH of sumac with its drum-major plumes, a bough of elder bending under its load of dark-hued berries, a raspberry bramble, low trailing and graceful; these were my trophies from the woodland one sunny October afternoon, and to the uninitiated they doubtless would seem but random and commonplace mementos of an autumn ramble. But these branches, seemingly uninteresting and aimlessly gathered, have been the scenes of great toil, brave deeds, faithful devotion, and also, alas, of treach1 From Ways of the Six-Footed by Anna Botsford Comstock, copyrighted by The Comstock Publishing Company. Used by permission.

ery and tragedy. I will relate to you the history revealed by these broken boughs - a history to discover which has required many patient hours of watching by eyes that loved the work.

One morning last May, had you been watching, you might have seen a little insect, not more than a fourth of an inch long flitting about these branches, her body metallic blue, and her four gauzy wings flashing in the sunlight. Had you noted her then, you would have thought her created only for the enjoyment of a bright spring day. Little would you have dreamed of the strength of purpose and the power of endurance bound up in that wee body. You perhaps would have scarcely detected that she belonged to a family noted for perseverance and industry. Yet, despite her diminutive size and metallic colors, she is as truly a bee as the clumsiest bumblebee that ever hummed in the clover. She belongs especially, however, to the group of carpenter bees; she has a pretty scientific name, Ceratina dupla, that seems quite in keeping with her dainty personality. Her popular name is simply the little carpenter bee.

However, very little cares she by what Latin name mortal man has chosen to call her, for weighty responsibilities rest upon her mind this bright May morning; and so she hunts until she finds some broken twig of elder or sumac which permits her to come into direct contact with the pith of the plant. Then our heroine, with the aid of her mandibles or jaws, commences to excavate a tunnel in the branch by removing the pith mouthful by mouthful. Very carefully is the work done, the pith being neatly cut, so that the walls of the tunnel are left straight and smooth. To bring her undertaking within our comprehension, we might compare her to a man who should attempt to dig a well three or four feet wide and two hundred feet deep, and with no tools except his hands with which to remove the earth. The tunnel of the Ceratina is about one eighth of an inch in diameter, and often as much as eight or ten inches in depth.

But when our little bee is through excavating her tunnel and

has finished it with all the nicety prompted by her own fine sense of the fitness of things, she has really but begun her summer's work. Her next task combines pleasure and duty, for it takes her into the fields to gather pollen from the flowers. This she carries little by little to the tunnel; but it requires many trips back and forth before she has packed the bottom of the nest with pollen to the depth of a quarter of an inch. This done, she deposits upon it a tiny white egg; and then she proceeds to build a partition above by gluing together bits of pith and other suitable material with a glue which she always keeps on hand, or rather in mouth, for the purpose. This partition is fastened firmly to the sides of the tunnel and is about one tenth of an inch thick; it serves as a roof for the first cell and as a floor for the next. Then the process is repeated; she gathers more pollen, lays another egg, builds another partition, and so on, until the tunnel is filled to within an inch or so of the opening. The last egg is thus necessarily deposited many days after the first one.

Thus, you see, this matron has her family in an apartment house, each child occupying an entire flat. Then there comes a time of rest for the industrious little mother, for her next duty is to remain quiet and wait for her family to grow up. But her fidelity is unfailing; the space left empty at the top of the tunnel serves as a vestibule to her dwelling, and there she waits and watches over her home.

While she is guarding the door, let us take a peep into the first cell and see what is taking place there. From the egg there hatches a minute, white, footless larva, which immediately falls to eating the pollen provided by its thoughtful mother. On this food it thrives and grows, until it is a quarter of an inch long; by this tíme, probably, it has consumed all the pollen in the cell. However, the mother bee's instinct does not seem to be infallible in this particular, for sometimes she provides more food than her offspring needs. After the larva has thus reached its full growth, it becomes rigid and turns darker in color, and