Note 744 — LETTER XIII.

Some time after making this experiment I stumbled upon a passage in Redi (De Insectis, p. 119.) from which it appears that Blancanus, in his Commentaries upon Aristotle, has related a series of observations which led him to precisely the same result. Lehmann, too, in a paper in the Transactions of the Society of Naturalists at Berlin (translated in the Philosophical Magazine, xi. 323.) has given an explanation somewhat similar of the operations of this very spider, but I am inclined to think erroneous in some particulars. He describes it as emitting numerous floating threads at the commencement of its descent. That he is mistaken in supposing these threads to be more than one, is proved by the fact which I have observed—that even that one sometimes breaks by the weight of the spider. How then could an insect almost as big as a gooseberry be supported by a line of the tenuity here attributed to it?