faculties. He would begin by using it, as the monkey does its prehensile
tail, to swing himself from branch to branch, and finally, to escape
from an enemy or in pursuit of his prey, he would be able by means of
his cord to drop himself with safety from the tallest trees, or fly down
the steepest precipices. He would coil up his cord to make a bed to lie
on, and also use it for binding branches together when building himself
a refuge. In a close fight, he would endeavour to entangle an adversary,
and at last he would learn to make a snare with it to capture his prey.
To all these, and to a hundred other uses, the spider has put his web.
And when we see him spread his beautiful geometric snare, held by lines
fixed to widely separated points, while he sits concealed in his
web-lined retreat amongst the leaves where every touch on the
far-reaching structure is telegraphed to him by the communicating line
faithfully as if a nerve had been touched, we must admire the wonderful
perfection to which he has attained in the use of his cord. By these
means he is able to conquer creatures too swift and strong for him, and
make them his prey. When we see him repairing damages, weighting his
light fabric in windy weather with pebbles or sticks, as a fisher
weights his net, and cutting loose a captive whose great strength
threatens the destruction of the web, then we begin to suspect that he
has, above his special instinct, a reason that guides, modifies, and in
many ways supplements it. It is not, however, only on these great
occasions, when the end is sought by unusual means, that spiders show
their intelligence; for even these things might be considered by some as
merely parts of one great complex instinct; but at all times, in all
things, the observer who watches them closely cannot fail to be
convinced that they possess a guiding principle which is not mere
instinct. What the stick or stone was to primitive man, when he had made
the discovery that by holding it in his hand he greatly increased the
force of his blow, the possession of a web has been to the spider in