BY CECIL WARBURTON, M.A. Christ’s College Zoologist to the Royal Agricultural Society Cambridge: at the University Press 1912 Cambridge: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS With the exception of the coat of arms at the foot, the design on the title page is a reproduction of one used by the earliest known Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521...

T HE modest dimensions of this book are perhaps sufficient indication that it is not intended as an aid to the collector. There are about five hundred and fifty known species of spiders in the United Kingdom alone, and at least an equal number of pages would be needed to describe them. Our concern is with the habits and modes of life of spiders—especially of such as are most frequently met with and most easily recognised, and the reader, especially if he is fortunate enough to spend an occasiona

A SURVEY OF THE FIELD There are certain days of the year when the immense wealth of spider industry going on all around us is revealed in a way calculated to strike even the least observant. We all know—and derive no peculiarly pleasant thrill from the knowledge—that we can, if so minded, find abundance of cobwebs and their occupants by visiting the cellar or the tool-house; and probably we have all at times noticed, with a languid interest, large circular webs on our favourite rose-bushes, with

WHAT IS A SPIDER? Not many years ago the group Insecta was held even by Zoologists to include numberless small creatures—centipedes, spiders, mites, etc.—which further study has shown to present essential differences of structure, and in popular language any fairly minute animal is still an insect, just as any insect is popularly a “fly”—or, in the United States, a “bug.” Scientifically the use of the term Insect is now much restricted, though still extensive enough in all conscience, since it i

THE CIRCULAR SNARE Select the most perfect circular snare at hand, and examine it attentively. In the autumn, when the large garden-spider, Epeira diademata (fig. 2 A ), is mature, it will probably be easy to find such a snare a foot or more in diameter. It is stretched within an irregular frame of foundation lines of extra thickness and strength, and consists of a large number of radii or spokes connected by what appear to be a series of concentric circles, in reality a continuous spiral, like

MENTAL POWERS OF SPIDERS Before leaving the garden-spider let us undertake some little investigation of its mental powers—if it possesses any. The commonest mistake with regard to all animals is to interpret their actions from the human standpoint, and to credit them with emotions and with deliberate forethought of which there is in reality no proof whatever. The power to spin such a complicated snare as we have just described predisposes us to attribute a high order of intelligence to a creatur

TRAP-SNARES AND BALLOONS There are some interesting variants of the circular snare spun by some exotic Epeirids. One North American species spins it in a horizontal position and then raises the centre, and, by an elaborate system of stay lines from above, converts it into a very accurately shaped dome. A whole group of orb-weavers habitually decorate a sector of the snare with bands of flocculent silk, the object of which for a long time puzzled arachnologists, till it was observed that the spid

AGELENA Before going farther afield, let us investigate one of the spinners of the sheet-webs that are so unpleasantly familiar in the house. We object to them on very obvious grounds, first as evidence of neglect and bad housewifery, and secondly as repulsive objects when covered by accumulations of dust which their firm texture and their durability make inevitable. The common house-spiders belong to the family Agelenidae. It is quite likely that their original home was in a warmer climate wher

WATER-SPIDERS Here is the place to insert a short account of some near relations of Agelena which we shall certainly not meet in our walk, but of which the mode of life is too interesting to be altogether passed over in silence. We have seen that the class Crustacea (crabs, shrimps, etc.) is the great division of the Arthropoda entirely adapted to an aquatic life, breathing, by means of gills, the air which is dissolved in the water. Insects and spiders are air-breathing, and properly belong to

CRAB-SPIDERS. MIMICRY All spiders can spin, but by no means all use that power to entrap their prey. Many have no settled abode or resting place except perhaps for a short time when they are rearing their young. Among these roving tribes, there are three groups which may engage our attention for a time—the Crab-spiders (Thomisidae), the Wolf-spiders (Lycosidae) and the Jumping spiders (Attidae). Crab-spiders are seldom seen by the ordinary observer, for their habits do not bring them prominently

WOLF-SPIDERS Of the groups of wandering spiders, which spin no snare but trust to speed and agility for their food, the Lycosidae or wolf-spiders supply the best subjects for study. To begin with, they are very numerous at certain times of the year, some species absolutely swarming in woods during May and June among the leaves which fell in the previous autumn. During the summer months they are still in evidence, but as winter approaches they rapidly disappear. The swift motion and predaceous ha

JUMPING SPIDERS We are not in the land of the jumping spiders or Attidae, and our few and sober-coloured examples of the group give but a feeble idea of the Attid fauna of tropical countries where these creatures abound and often rival the “ruby-tail” flies in the brilliancy of their hues. Fig. 8. Salticus scenicus , female, × 4. It is one of the largest groups, numbering several thousand species, but the British list includes barely thirty, and most of these are of rare occurrence, or at all ev

THERAPHOSID SPIDERS It is quite impossible in a work like the present to deal with the classification of spiders. About forty families have been established, some of them of vast extent, the Attidae, for example, including some four thousand species. The great French arachnologist, M. E. Simon, has occupied 2,000 quarto pages in defining the families, sub-families and genera, without concerning himself with the species at all! It is, however, desirable, that the attention of the reader should be

STRIDULATION Many of the Arthropoda—the large group which includes insects and crustaceans as well as Arachnida—are able to produce sounds, a fact familiar enough in such insects as crickets and grass-hoppers. As, however, the breathing apparatus of these animals is entirely different from that of mammals and has no connection whatever with the mouth and alimentary canal, the mode of sound production is not at all the same. Instead of setting vocal chords in vibration by the expulsion of air thr

THE SPINNING APPARATUS, AND THE FEET Seeing that the possession of spinnerets is a characteristic of all spiders, and that a great deal of the interest attaching to their life-history arises from their spinning operations, any account of the group, however brief, would be incomplete without some attempt to describe these remarkable organs. Among the spiders to which the attention of the reader has been directed, some have been highly accomplished spinners, constructing complicated snares, retrea

THE ENEMIES OF SPIDERS When one comes to consider the multitudinous risks to which a spider is exposed during the whole course of its life it seems at first a little surprising that the whole tribe has not long ago been exterminated. Spiders continue to flourish, however, and it is very clear that however careless Nature may be of the individual she is extremely solicitous about the race. The infant mortality among these creatures must be appalling. There is first their cannibalistic propensity

SOME CONCLUDING REFLEXIONS In the foregoing pages we have been able to deal with very few out of the vast number of known spiders; yet the examples we have chosen for study are fairly typical of some of the more important groups, and calculated to give a tolerably just idea of the general economy of the tribe. In any case even such a fragmentary study as the present gives us food for thought. There is a question which the writer has so often been asked that he is inclined to deal with it in anti

Most of the large publications on the Arachnid fauna of different countries give some preliminary account of the habits of spiders, but the only considerable work entirely devoted to that subject is McCook’s American Spiders and their Spinning-work (Philadelphia, 1893). A small but interesting book on The Structure and Habits of Spiders was published ten years previously by Emerton (Boston, 1883). But the reader who wishes to pursue further the study of some point to which his attention has been