by modifications of the apparatus
which has always been used for twisting ordinary silk. It will probably
be inferred from the above, that, in securing the spider, two points are
to be considered; first, to prevent its escape, and second, so to
confine the legs that it cannot reach with their tips either the _silk_
or the _spinners_. Now the machine accomplished this by putting all the
legs together in a vice, as it were, entailing upon the captive much
discomfort and perhaps the loss of some of its legs, which, though eight
in number, are each appropriated to a special use by their possessor.

So, abandoning the machine, I fell back upon a simple reel, and a
modification of my little contrivance of the previous year; which was,
to grasp the spider by all the legs, holding them behind her back, and
to let her body down into a deep notch or slot cut in a thin card, the
edges of which reached the constriction between the two regions of the
body, the _cephalothorax_ and _abdomen_; so that, when a second piece of
card was let down upon it, the _cephalothorax_, with the _legs_ of the
spider, was upon one side of a partition, while on the other was the
_abdomen_, bearing upon its posterior extremity the spinning organs. The
head and horns of a cow to be milked are secured in a similar manner. By
placing in a row, or one behind another, several spiders thus secured, a
compound thread was simultaneously obtained from them, and wound upon a
spindle of hard rubber.

By this means were produced several very handsome bands of bright yellow
silk; but the time was so short, and the means of constructing and
improving my apparatus so deficient, that I could procure no more than
these few specimens, which were very beautiful, and shone in the sun
like polished and almost translucent gold; but which, being wound upon a
cylinder only an inch in diameter, and from several spiders at different
times, could not be unwound, and so made of any further use.

I tried now to ascertain how much silk could be obtained from a single
spider at once. It will be remembered that the first specimen, wound on
Folly Island, was one hundred and fifty yards in length, and weighed one
third of a grain. I now exhausted the supply of a spider for three days,
using the same spindle, one inch in diameter, and turning this at the
rate of one hundred and sixty times per minute. On the first day I
reeled for twenty minutes, which gave two hundred and sixty-six an