OCTOBER

I

WITH each October in every year for a long time past, I have watched for

the going of the martins, but have never yet contrived to witness the

moment of their flight. It has always happened in the same way. One day

they have been as busy as ever about the roof-eaves, their chattering

song pervading the house unceasingly from dark to dark. And then a

morning comes, generally towards the end of the first week in the month,

when I awaken to a curious sense of strangeness and loss. First I mark

the unwonted silence outside the windows, and then I guess what has come

about. Looking forth, I see that the little mud-houses, huddled together

in a long row under the eaves, are deserted and silent at last.

But to-day, though I missed the departure of the martins as usual, I was

not wholly disappointed. Getting up in the new silence and throwing the

windows back, I looked along the roof-edge. Save for the chippering and

fluttering of a few sparrows, there was nothing to be seen or heard in

the dim grey light. But it seemed the little army could have been away

only a few minutes before me, for while I looked, I saw the last of them

depart. One single note of the remembered song broke out overhead; there

was a whir of wings, and the little black-and-white bird lanced straight

off, going due south unhesitatingly, as though the vanished throng of her

companions was yet visible far away in the skies.

It was a still, grey, warm morning. There had been no dew. Everything,

as presently I went along by the wood-side, was quite dry; and though it

was barely eight o’clock, all the spiders in the bushes were hard at work

weaving their snares. It was almost perfect spinning weather. On windy

mornings, though the webs must be made, the task is difficult and the

work seldom properly carried out. But to-day there was only a vague air

moving from the south-west, and all the spiders had got to work betimes,

and with light hearts.

The great charm in all nature study is to find out the truth for yourself

at first hand. There are few things in my life I regret so keenly as the

reading of nature books. This has robbed me of many a moment of

pleasurable surprise; for to recognise a commonly accepted fact is poor

substitute for its original discovery, although this discovery may have

been made by others a thousand times before. Looking back over twenty

years’ poking and prying in the woods and fields round about Windlecombe,

I rejoice not so much at the many things I have found out, but at the

fact of so many things still unread of, and still remaining to be

discovered. This morning, as I went along by the bushes in the lee of

the wood, and saw the spiders at work, it suddenly occurred to me that I

knew little or nothing about them; and the recognition of this ignorance

came to me as truest bliss. I fell to looking on at the ingenious,

complicated work with almost as much anxiety and interest as the male

spiders themselves.

For it appears to be only the female who spins a web. The big-bodied

spider, so industriously occupied in every gap of the thicket, is always

the female, though the male is never far off. You are sure to find him

peering out from under one of the adjacent leaves, or treading timidly on

the circumference of the web, trying to attract the attention, and

thereafter, perhaps, the regard of its maker.

Spider nets and their weavers have, I think, never been given quite their

place in the world of wonders. As far as human profit is concerned,

spiders are useless things; and have therefore missed, because, from that

standpoint, they have not merited, popular favour. But no doubt their

ingenuity as craftswomen stands very nearly on a level with that of the

worker honey-bee. The waxen comb of the bee, whose perfection is due to

the combined arts of engineer, mason, and geometrician, is very little

superior in design and carrying-out to the spider’s web.

On these still, grey autumn mornings, the tendency of the eye is not to

wander far afield, but to concern itself with the little things of the

wayside close at hand; and so, more than at any other time of year,

perhaps, the spiders and their ways come in for narrow scrutiny. And

here is something, in the first loving investigation of which the

uninformed, unread observer is much to be envied.

He notices in the outset that these fine silken snares, hung by the

spiders in the hedgerows, are of two kinds—the one placed vertically

across a gap in the surface of the thicket; the other placed

horizontally, closing up some shaft or upward passage-way in the heart of

the green bush. The vertical net is seen to be composed of a number of

threads radiating from a common centre, and upon these threads an

ever-increasing spiral line has been laid, forming a regular, meshed net.

But the horizontal web has none of this geometric neatness. It is a mere

expanse of fine tissue irregularly woven into a sort of crazy pattern,

and slung hammock fashion, completely closing the chimney-like hollow

wherein it has been made. From a view of the finished webs, two other

facts will be noted—the vertical net is supported only by lines springing

from its circumference, and the spider sits at its centre in front; the

horizontal net is suspended by numberless fine lines attached at all

points in its upper surface, while the spider clings to the under side as

she lies in wait for her prey.

But it is in the actual weaving of the nets that the interest of the

onlooker will be chiefly centred. The maker of the vertical, or

cartwheel, pattern of web begins operations in various ways, according to

the conditions imposed upon her by the weather and the spot she has

selected. Webs made in calm seasons, or when only light airs are

stirring, will have few mainstays, and these may be of considerable

length; but in windy times the spider will stretch her snare on only

short hawsers, using as many as may be necessary to make assurance doubly

sure. But in either case she will commence the work in much the same

way.

First she goes to the highest point on the windward side of her gap, and

turning her head to the current, begins to pay out a line behind her. As

this floats out, she continually tries it with her leg until she knows

that the end of the line has caught in the opposite twigs. Then she runs

to the middle of this horizontal line, dragging after her another thread

which she has previously attached to her original starting-point. From

the centre of the first line she lowers herself vertically, always

dragging the second line in her rear, until she reaches a twig below.

Here she draws her second line tight and fastens it, after which she

climbs to the horizontal line and repeats the manœuvre, only this time

from its leeward end. Thus the triangle of mainstays—the first essential

in all spider-web making—is complete.

The weaving of the net within this triangular frame is the next work

undertaken. The spider, when she first dropped from the centre of her

uppermost thread, made a vertical line in descending. Some point on this

line marks the centre of the future cartwheel pattern of web, and this

central point the spider now finds unerringly, and begins to put in one

by one the radiating spokes of the wheel. When all these spokes are in

place, she returns to the centre, and revolving her body quickly, she

forms upon it a close spiral of four or five turns. This is to be her

seat and watch-tower, whence she will keep the whole web under

observation. Having done this, she now—if the morning is at all

breezy—carries temporary stay-lines from spoke to spoke all round the

web, these isolated circles of thread occurring at intervals of an inch

or so between centre and circumference. But on still mornings this part

of her work is omitted as unnecessary, and she proceeds at once to the

main spinning of the net.

The construction of the cross-threads between the spokes of the web is

always commenced at the extreme outer edges of the space to be filled;

and the spider works inwardly, carrying the thread round and round from

spoke to spoke until she arrives within half an inch or so of the central

small spiral. But the two are never joined: an interval is always left

where the web consists of nothing but bare radiating lines. The snare is

now finished. The spider takes up her station in the middle of the net,

with no more to do for the rest of the day but take what fair chance, and

her own crafty ingenuity, may provide.

Yet, having thus watched the making of a spider-web from start to finish,

and having noted all the details of construction here set down, there is

something more about the matter which, if it escape the observer, will

leave him in the rather disgraceful plight of having missed the most

wonderful thing of all.

The spider’s snare is not woven throughout of the same kind of thread.

Two kinds are used, and the difference between them is apparent even to

eyes of very moderate power. While the triangle and the radiating lines

are made of plain silk, the cross-threads are corrugated, and look like

strings of tiny, transparent beads. A touch of the finger will prove

that these beads are really adhering drops of some glutinous fluid, whose

use is not difficult to guess. But how do the beads get on the line,

seeing that this, when first drawn from the spider’s body, is visibly

nothing but a plain filament of silk, like the rest of the web?

The question has been asked many times, and the answer commonly given is,

I have come to believe, an entirely erroneous one. We are told that the

thread used for the cross-bars in a spider’s web, when it first emerges

from the creature’s body, is only smeared, not beaded with the gluten;

but that after attaching each segment of the spiral to the spokes, the

spider gives it a twang with her foot, thus causing the gluten to

separate into beads. Here then is a fact such as one would read in the

nature books, and unquestionably accept. But a little independent

experiment with various kinds of strings, elastic or non-elastic, and

smeared with different glutinous substances, reveals the fact that no

amount of twanging will induce the latter to divide into beads, such as

one sees in the spider line. In every case, the tendency of the gluten

in the experiment is to fly off altogether, or to gather to one side of

the string.

But to any that desires to know the truth of the thing, the spider

herself will speedily resolve the difficulty. Watch her at work, and it

will soon be seen that the beads are formed on the line not by twanging,

but by stretching. At the moment each length of sticky thread is drawn

from the spider’s spinnerets, it is destitute of beads. But the spider

quickly stretches it out to nearly double its original length, and then

as quickly slackens it; whereupon, before she has well had time to fasten

the thread in its place, the beads will be seen to have formed themselves

throughout its entire length.