And now I am afraid you are finding this rather dry, and if I don’t tell you a story you will be frightened away like Miss Moffat.
A beautiful, regular pattern.
One day Emma felt very hungry; her larder was quite empty and she had been without food for nearly a week. It was a fine evening, with just a gentle little wind blowing, so she thought she would try a new place for her web, where it would have a better chance of catching something. She climbed up fairly high and then let herself drop with all her legs stretched out, spinning all the time the thread by which she was hanging. Then she climbed up it, spinning another thread, and when she had like this spun some nice strong sticky threads she waited for the wind to carry them on to some branches of furze. When these held, Emma ran along them, fastened them firmly and spun a fresh thread each time till she made a line that was strong and elastic, and so not likely to break easily. When she was satisfied it would bear the weight of the web, she spun struts from it to hold it firm and then began the web itself. She first made a kind of outline and then spun and worked towards the middle. It was wonderful to see what a beautiful regular pattern she was spinning, with nothing but her instinct to guide her.
You know when a house is being built it has tall poles all round it called scaffolding, which helps the building; well, the first outline of the web was Emma’s scaffolding, and when it was no longer wanted she got rid of it by eating it up!
“But how did Emma spin a thread?” I can hear you asking.
It is like this—suppose you had a ball of silk in your pocket and ran about twisting it round trees to make a big net. This is really what the spider does, but the silk comes from inside her and will never come to an end like the ball in your pocket. It issues from what are called spinnerets. When she lets herself drop, the spinnerets regulate the thread, but when she is running along spinning she uses two of her back legs to pay it out, just as you would have to use your hands to pull the silk out of your pocket. It is a pity spiders usually spin their webs at night, so that we seldom get a chance of watching them.
I said just now that Emma’s silk never comes to an end, but sometimes if a very big fly or wasp gets caught in her net she has to use a great deal of her silk, which she winds round and round the fly, binding him hand and foot, and then her stock of thread which is carried inside her may run low; but it soon comes again, especially if she gets a good meal and a nice long rest.
A fly struggling in her web.
When Emma had finished she was pleased with the look of her web and hid herself at the side of it under a furze branch. She watched and waited. She waited all night long and nothing happened.