File:The textile manufactures of the ancients - embracing the history of silk, linen, cotton, wool, and other fibrous substances - deduced from Yate's (sic) Textrinum antiquorum, and other authentic (14773395535).jpg

Identifier: textilemanufactu00prac (find matches)
Title: The textile manufactures of the ancients : embracing the history of silk, linen, cotton, wool, and other fibrous substances : deduced from Yate's (sic) Textrinum antiquorum, and other authentic sources
Year: 1873 (1870s)
Authors: Practical Manufacturer Yates, James, 1789-1871. Textrinum antiquorum
Subjects: Textile industry Textile fabrics, Ancient
Publisher: Boston : Printed for the author
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute

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tric-net of a conic spider (Epeira conica, Walck.)on the framework of the deck, and as it was covered withflakes of soot from the smoke of the engine, we were surprisedto see a spider at work on it; for, in order to be useful, this sortof net must be clean. Upon observing it a little closely, how-ever, we perceived that she was not constructing a net, butdressing up an old one; though not, we must think, to savetrouble, so much as an expenditure of material. Some of thelines she dexterously stripped of the flakes of soot adhering tothem; but in the greater number, finding that she could notget them sufficiently clean, she broke them quite off, bundledthem up, and tossed them over. We counted five of thesepackets of rubbish which she thus threw away, though theremust have been many more, as it was some time before we dis-covered the manoeuvre, the packets being so small as not to bereadily perceived, except when placed between the eye and the * Spectacle de la Nature, i. p. 61. FlatelT
Text Appearing After Image:
: SILKEN MATERIAL OF THE SPIDER. 173 light. When she had cleared off all the sooted lines, she beganto replace them in the usual way; but the arrival of the boatat Mentz put an end to our observations. Bloomfield, thepoet, having observed the disappearance of these bits of ravelledweb, says that he observed a garden spider moisten the pelletsbefore swallowing them ! Dr. Lister, as we have already seen,thought the spider retracted the threads within the abdomen. I could wish, says Addison, in The Spectator, cur Royal Society wouldcompile a body of natural history, the best that could be gathered together frombooks and observations. If the several writers among them took each his partic-ular species, and gave us a distinct account of its original, birth, and education;its policies, hostilities, and alliances ; with the frame and texture of its inward andoutward parts,—and particularly those which distinguish it from all other animals,—with their aptitudes for the state of being in w

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