I don’t believe you are feeling a bit afraid of spiders now, are you? There is no reason why we should fear them, for they don’t bite or sting us; and if they did the poison that paralyses and kills their prey would not hurt us. Besides, they kill the insects that harm us. I saw a spider’s web once full of mosquitoes, and you know what worrying little pests they are. I was glad to see so many caught, but sorry for the spider, as they didn’t look a very substantial meal. Then you know how dangerous flies have been found to be, making people ill by poisoning their food, so it is a good thing that spiders help us to get rid of them.
Another reason to like spiders is for their webs. There is no animal or insect that makes anything quite so wonderful and beautiful as what these little creatures spin.
The spider’s web is really a snare for catching her food. The strands of it are so fine as often to be invisible in some lights even in the daytime, and of course quite invisible at night. Sometimes the beetle or flying insect is so strong that he can tear the web and get free, but not often, for the spider can do wonders with her thread. She spins ropes and throws them at her big prey and doesn’t go near it till it is bound and helpless.
Of course, there are many different kinds of spiders who spin different kinds of webs. In a hotter country than this there is one that is as big or rather bigger than your hand, and another called the Tarantula whose bite is supposed to be so poisonous that it can kill people, but this is very exaggerated.
A Beautiful Web.
As the spider’s web is only her snare, she naturally has to have some kind of home, which must be quite near to her place of business. If you look very close and follow one of the strands of the web you will find some little dark cranny where the huntress can hide. If the web is amongst trees it will probably be a leaf she has pulled together with her thread and made into a dark little tunnel out of which she darts when something is caught.
Now before we leave the spiders’ webs you may wonder why you never see them so clearly as they show in the photographs, and I will tell you the reason. You see if the spiders’ nets which are set to catch sharp-eyed insects were always to show as clearly as they do in the pictures, I am afraid they would really starve, for no fly would be silly enough to go into such a bright trap. But sometimes in the autumn, very early in the morning, the dew hangs in tiny beads on the webs, and makes them show up clearly, and then it is that the photographs are taken. If you get up early some still September morning, just about the same time as the sun, and go for a walk in a wood, or even along a country road, you may see the webs with what look like strings of the tiniest pearls on them, and you will find that until the sun has dried up all the little wet pearls, which are of course dewdrops, the poor spider has not a ghost of a chance of catching anything.
But to return to the spider herself. The one you know best is probably the house-spider. It has eight legs and a body rather the shape of a fat egg, with a little round bead of a head. It runs up the walls, sometimes hanging by a thread from the ceiling, and seems very fond of the corners of the room. How glad these house-spiders must be when they get to a dirty untidy house, where they will be safe from the broom. Most of us hate to see cobwebs in our houses, and get rid of them as quickly as we can.