But spiders not merely have sociability and
co-operation, they can display these qualities in
a way evincing what may be called shiftiness or
resource. Of course, after finding the mygale's
nest in the lump of clay, I returned several times
to explore the steep sea-bank more carefully.
On one of these occasions I found an egg-bag of
a spider, which I guessed to be the Clubiona
atrox of Walckenäer, and I put this bag into a
chip-box. Opening the chip-box one morning,
I was astonished to see it full of very small
spiders, a considerable number of whom got out
of the box and down the sides of it before I
recovered from my astonishment. Not thinking
of any better way, on the spur of the moment, of
preventing them from making their escape, I
emptied the chip-box upon the lump of clay in
the flower-pot which contained the nest of
Dysdera erythrina; and then I put the flower-
pot upon an upturned small plate, which I placed
in the bottom of a large plate, filling the space
between the top of the small and the edge of the
large plate with water. Believing them to be of
a species incapable of crossing water, I thought
my prisoners were held fast in a clay prison
surrounded by a ditch or moat; but I was
deceived. One morning, I found that several of
them had escaped, by making threads straight
down from the edge of the flower-pot to the edge
of the plate. How they accomplished this great
feat I cannot imagine. I found several of them
drowned or drowning in the water. One I
actually saw walking very warily and charily
upon the surface of it. It seemed perfectly aware
that if it sunk through the first thin film upon
the surface it would sink and be drowned.
Lighting my candle before retiring to rest one
night, I witnessed a marvellous scene upon the
top of the flower-pot. When I first placed the
very tiny spiders upon the lump of clay, they
very quickly disappeared, most of them taking
possession of the mygale's nest. During the day,
a few watchers, or patrols, alone were to be seen;
but when the candle was suddenly lit at night,
from thirty to forty of the spiders were seen
busily engaged in weaving a tent, dome,
awning, or canopy, from the rim of the flower-
pot and over the lump of clay. The pinnacle of
the dome was the broken wing of a daddy-long-
legs which I had put upon the top of the clay,
fancying the spiders would eat it. The weavers
were divided into parties of warpers and woofers,
and were under the superintendence of overseers.
On receiving a hint or touch from the uplifted
fore-leg of an overseer, a woofer ran swiftly down
from the pinnacle, laying threads from his
spinnerets, and fastening them to the rim of the
flower-pot, and then running quickly up again.
The woofer thus laid down eight threads every
time he descended and mounted up again. The
moment the woofer reached the top a warper was
started off from the opposite side of the pinnacle
with his cross threads, which he laid down by
travelling over the circuit of a comparatively
long crescent or segment of a circle, which also
descended down as far as the outer edge of the
flower-pot.

Thirty or forty tiny spiders with white bodies
and fawn-hued legs, busy weaving on factory or
co-operative principles a dome of the finest silk,
made up a scene never to be forgotten. It
revealed what is called " instinct" in a new and
startling form, for the faculty of co-operation
under overseers, woofers, and warpers, is, as far
as I can learn, a new fact in spider life. The
projecting ends of grass roots and the like were
skilfully used to keep the canopy about an inch
all round away from the clay. This fabric was
seen, besides other persons, by two members of
the Brighton and Sussex Natural History Society.
It was so fine, that the unassisted eye looking
straight upon it could not see it, but when viewed
at favourable angles both warp and woof were
clearly discernible, and on very close inspection
I discovered a few little holes. One of the
Brighton naturalists who saw it says it resembled
in its shape " a skull-cap;" and the other
naturalist, although fresh from the marvels of
the International Exhibition, declared it to be
"the most singular structure he ever saw." One
day I put a fly upon the outside of the web to
ascertain what the functions of the spiders which
I have called watchers and patrols really were;
for there were three or four inside under the
pinnacle, and as many outside wandering about all
day. The instant I put the fly upon the tent one
of the patrols swiftly ran close up to it, and then,
seeing the fly was, relatively to itself, a huge
animal, ran away again.

All the animal silk hitherto known has been
produced by individual spiders, or spinning
animals. Social spinning is a phenomenon which
has been conjectured, but which, as far as I know,
never before has been observed, in the brute
world. Strangely enough the animals which spin
the silk which has become an article of clothing
to millions of species are not called spiders,
except by an adjective in the Latin names of the
savans. Silk is spun by mollusks, by moths, by
spiders, but, according to all prior observation,
always by individuals and never by communities.
Silk is an animal secretion which, on drying in
the air, is soft, elastic, and flexible. Any one
who is spending a week at the sea-side may, by
putting half a dozen mussels into an earthenware
pan, and replenishing it daily with sea-water,
witness how the mussel weaves its byssus; the
silk issues from the base of what is called the
foot, and the foot becomes a hand to mould and
attach the secretion. There is a species of
periwinkle called Litopia bombix, or single-apertured
spinner, which makes a thread by which it hangs to
floating seaweed. Certain Australian caterpillars
are described as having woven an unbroken sheet
of silk, measuring more than two hundred and
fifty feet square; but no account has been
published of their mode of weaving. I gave a very
short and inadequate account in No. 142 of this
journal, of certain cobwebs woven by a species
of spider (Neriene errans, which is usually found