The Clever Spider

The Clever Spider.

"One of my friends was accustomed to grant shelter to a number of garden spiders under a vacant veranda and to watch their habits. One day a sharp storm broke out, and the wind raged so furiously through the garden that the spiders suffered damage from it, although sheltered by the varanda. The , mainyards of one these webs, as the sailors would call them, were broken so that the web was blown hither and thither, like a slack sail in a storm.

"The spider made no fresh threads, but tried to help itself in another way. It let itself down to the ground by a thread and crawled to a place where lay some splintered pieces of a wooden fence, thrown down by the storm. It fastened a thread to one of the bits of wood, turned back with it and hung it with a strong thread to the lower part of its nest, about five feet from the ground. The performance was a wonderful one, for the weight of the wood sufficed to keep the nest tolerably firm, while it was yet light enough to yield to the wind and so prevent further injury. The piece of wood was about 2 1/2 inches long and as thick as a goose quill.

"On the following day a careless servant knocked her head against the wood, and it fell down. But in the course of a few hours the spider mended her web, broke the supporting thread in two and let the wood fall to the ground."--Our Animal Friends