wonderful great webs, as big as the shield of Achilles. What a
surprising passion of engineering the spider must go through in the
dark hours, to get his struts and cantilevers and his circling
gossamer girders properly disposed on the foliage.[*] Darkness is no
difficulty to him, evidently. If he lays his web on the grass, he
builds it with a little tunnel leading down to earth, where he hides
waiting his breakfast. But on such a morning, apparently, with
thousands of webs ready, there can hardly have been enough flies to
go round; for we saw all the appetent spiders had emerged from their
tubes and were waiting impatiently on the web itself--as though the
host should sit on the tablecloth waiting for his guest. Put a
finger at the rim of the web and see how quickly he vanishes down
his shaft. Most surprising of all it is to see the long threads that
are flung horizontally through the air, from a low branch of a tree
to the near-by hedge. They hang, elastic and perfect, sagged a
little by a run of fog-drops almost invisible except where the
wetness catches the light. Some were stretched at least six feet
across space, with no supporting strands to hold them from
above--and no branches from which the filament could be dropped. How
is it done? Does our intrepid weaver hurl himself madly six feet
into the dark, trusting to catch the leaf at the other end? Can he
jump so far?

[* Perhaps the structural talent of our Salamis arachnids is
exceptional. Perhaps it is due to the fact that the famous
Engineers' Country Club is near by. Can the spiders have
learned their technology by watching those cheerful scientists
on the golf greens?]

All this sort of thing is, quite plainly, magic. It is rather