threads from papillæ or nipples, placed at the
hinder part of their body. The thread, when
it leaves them, is a glutinous liquid, which
hardens on exposure to the air. It has been
found that, by squeezing a spider, and placing
the finger against its papillæ, the liquid of
which the thread or silk is made may be
drawn out to a great length.

M. Reaumur, the rival experimentalist to
M. Bon, discovered that the papillæ are
formed of an immense number of smaller
papillæ, from each of which a minute and
distinct thread is spun. He asserted that,
with a microscope, he counted as many as
seventy distinct fibres proceeding from the
papillæ of one spider, and that there were
many more threads too minute and numerous
to compute. He jumped to a result, however,
that is sufficiently astonishing, namely,
that a thousand distinct fibres proceed from
each papillæ; and there being five large
papillæ, that every thread of spider's silk is
composed of at least five thousand fibres. In
the heat of that enthusiasm, with which the
microscope filled speculative minds in the
beginning of last century, M. Leuwenhoek
ventured to assert that a hundred of the
threads of a full-grown spider were not equal
to the diameter of one single hair of his beard.
This assertion leads to the astounding
arithmetical deduction, that if the spider's threads
and the philosopher's hair be both round, ten
thousand threads are not bigger than such
a hair; and, computing the diameter of a
thread spun by a young spider as compared
with that of an adult spider, four millions of
the fibres of a young spider's web do not
equal a single hair of M. Leuwenhoek's beard.
The enthusiastic experimentalist must have
suffered horrible martyrdom under the razor,
with such an exaggerated notion of his beard
as these calculations must have given him.
A clever writer, in Lardner's Cyclopaedia,
notices these measurements, and shows that
M. Leuwenhoek went far beyond the limits
of reality in his calculation.

M. Bon's collection of spiders continued
to thrive; and, in due season, he found that
the greater number of them had completed
their cocoons or bags. He then dislodged the
bags from the paper boxes; threw them into
warm water, and kept washing them until
they were quite free from dirt of any kind.
The next process was to make a preparation
of soap, saltpetre, and gum-arabic dissolved
in water. Into this preparation the bags
were thrown, and set to boil over a gentle fire
for the space of three hours. When they
were taken out and the soap had been rinsed
from them, they appeared to be composed of
fine, strong, ash-coloured silk. Before being
carded on fine cards, they were set out for
some days to dry thoroughly. The carding,
according to M. Bon, was an easy matter;
and he affirmed that the threads of the silk
he obtained were stronger and finer than
those of the silk-worm. M. Reaumur,
however, who was dispatched to the scene of
M. Bon's investigations by the Royal Academy
of Paris, gave a different version of the
matter. He found, that whereas the thread
of the spider's bag will sustain only thirty-
six grains, that of the silkworm will support
a weight of two drachms and a half—or four
times the weight sustained by the spider-
thread. Though M. Bon was certainly an
enthusiast on behalf of spiders, M. Reaumur
as undoubtedly had a strong predilection in
favour of the bombyx; and the result of
these contending prejudices was, that M.
Bon's investigations were overrated by a
few, and utterly disregarded by the
majority of his countrymen. He injured
himself by rash assertions. He endeavoured to
make out that spiders were more prolific,
and yielded a proportionably larger quantity
of silk than silkworms. These assertions
were disproved, but in no kindly spirit, by
M. Reaumur. To do away with the impression
that spiders and their webs were venomous,
M. Bon not only asserted, with
truth, that their bite was harmless, but he
even went so far as to subject his favourite
insect to a chemical analysis, and he succeeded
in extracting from it a volatile salt which he
christened Montpelier drops, and recommended
strongly as an efficacious medicine
in lethargic states.

M. Bon undoubtedly produced, from the silk
of his spiders, a material that readily absorbed
all kinds of dyes, and was capable of being
worked in any loom. With his carded spider's
silk the enthusiastic experimentalist wove
gloves and stockings, which he presented to
one or two learned societies. To these
productions several eminent men took particular
exceptions. They discovered that the fineness
of the separate threads of the silk detracted
from its lustre, and inevitably produced a
fabric less refulgent than those woven from
the silkworm. M. Reaumur's most conclusive
fact against the adoption of spider's silk as an
article of manufacture, was deduced from his
observations on the combativeness of spiders.
He discovered that they had not arrived at
that state of civilisation when communities find
it most to the general advantage to live on
terms of mutual amity and confidence; on the
contrary, the spider-world, according to M.
Reaumur (we are writing of a hundred and
forty years ago), was in a continual state of
warfare—nay, not a few spiders were habitual
cannibals. Having collected about five thousand
spiders (enough to scare the most
courageous old lady). M. Reaumur shut them
up in companies varying in number from fifty
to one hundred. On opening the cells, after
the lapse of a few days, " what was the horror
of our hero," as the graphic novelist writes,
" to behold the scene which met his gaze! "
Where fifty spiders, happy and full of life,
had a short time before existed, only about
two bloated insects now remained—they had
devoured their fellow spiders! This horrible