The Atlantic Monthly

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18,
No. 106,
by Various

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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866
Author: Various
Release Date: October 16, 2007 [EBook #23040]
Language: English
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THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics.
VOL. XVIII.--AUGUST, 1866.--NO. CVI.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by TICKNOR
AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District
of Massachusetts.
Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes
moved to the end of the article.

HOW MY NEW ACQUAINTANCES SPIN.
The strictly professional man may have overcome his natural aversion
to some of the most interesting objects of his study, such as snakes, and
toads, and spiders, and vermin of all kinds; but people in general have
always required that any attempt to force such abominations upon their
notice should be preceded by a more or less elaborate and humble
acknowledgment of their hideous aspect, their ferocious disposition,
their dark and bloody deeds, and the utter impossibility of their
conducing in any way to human comfort and convenience.
But, while admitting the truth of much that has been thus urged against
spiders as a class, I must decline, or at least defer, conforming to
custom in speaking of the particular variety which we are about to
consider, and I believe that it will need only a glance at the insect and
its silk, and a brief notice of its habits, to justify my indisposition to
follow the usual routine.
Without apology, then, I shall endeavor to show that in the structure,
the habits, the mode of growth, and, above all, in the productions of

this spider are to be found subjects worthy the attention of every class
of minds; for to the naturalist is exhibited a species which, though not
absolutely new to science, was never seen nor heard of by Professor
Agassiz till the spring of 1865, and which is so narrowly circumscribed
in its geographical distribution that, so far as I can ascertain, it was
never observed by Hentz,--a Southern entomologist, who devoted
himself particularly to spiders,--and is met with only upon a few low,
marshy islands on the coast of South Carolina, and perhaps of other
Southern States. Its habits, too, are so interesting, and so different in
many respects from those recorded of other species, that the observer of
living creatures has here an abundant opportunity, not only for
increasing his own knowledge, but for enlarging the domain of science.
And this more especially in America; for while, in England, Blackwall
and others have been laboring for more than thirty years, spiders seem
to have received little attention on this side of the Atlantic.
We have now, moreover, in our observation of these insects, an
incentive of sovereign effect, namely, the hope of increasing our
national wealth; for to the practical man, to the manufacturer and the
mechanic, is offered a new silken material which far surpasses in
beauty and elegance that of the silk-worm, and which, however small in
quantity at present, demands some attention in view of the alarming
decrease in the silk crops of Europe. This material is obtained in a
manner entirely new,--not, as with the worm, by unwinding the
cocoons, nor yet, as might be suggested for the spider, by unravelling
the web, but by drawing or winding or reeling directly from the body of
the living insect, even as you would milk a cow, or, more aptly, as wire
is pulled through a wire-drawing machine.
To the admirer of the beautiful and perfect in nature is presented a fibre
of absolute smoothness, roundness, and finish, the colors of which
resemble, and in the sunlight even excel in brilliancy those of the two
precious metals, silver and gold; while the moralist who loves to
illustrate the workings of God's providence in bringing forth good out
of evil, by comparing the disgusting silk-worm with its beautiful and
useful product, may now enforce the lesson by the still more striking
contrast between this silk and the loathed and hated spider.

The statesman who, after a four years' war, sees few indications of a
better spirit on the part of