Morning journal and courier., 1889-09-24
THE GARDEN SPIDER.
A Hideous Animal Possessing the
 Highest Sense of order.

A Hideous Animal Possessing she Higkess Sense of order.
 From the St. Louis Republc.]
 The vexed question of the power of though. in the lower animals has . perma- nsnt interest for every inquiring mind, and few animals offer better subject for obser- yation in connection with. it than the com mon garden spider. We approach 1t as an embodiment of the radical mystery of things. Measured by our standard of beau ty and morals, 1t Is out of place in the uni verse. It is hideously ugly, as we under stand beauty and ugliness, and it's wonder moral instincts of destructiveness. Except in the care shown by the female for her eggs, it has never been found to show any trait of what, in the human animal, is rated as good ness. Even in the relations between the sexes it is fierce. The female eats the male who pays court to her if she can. 1t is an incarnation of the qualities of physical and moral ugliness-of the diabolieal or destruc- tive instinct.
 But by one of the most violent of those paradoxes everywhere presented in nature, this hideous animal has and uses in subser- vience to its destructive instincts, @ sense of order higher than that of uneducated man. Human reason halts lame before this com monplace spectacle of the garden spider building it's web. One of the species was recently watched through the whole progress of the work of building web some three feet in diameter, between pine tree and a vine trellis. After the supporting flores were thrown across, Interesting each other at the place chosen by the spider for the cen- ter, the frame work was made fast to the ground, and around the center dozen fila ments were carried and made fast in circu- lar form. From these, at the center, the spider carried out twenty-two flaments ra- diating like the spokes of wheel. She then began at the outer edge and wove the web toward the center. Rather she did not weave it, but carpentered 1t, for all the work was done on the same side, and none of the threads were interwoven. As she paid out the thread from the spinneret she supported herself with one foot, using the other feet to fasten the threads together. moving her feet so fast that the operation of glueing one thread to another was almost instantaneous. Working from circumference to center, she completed in ia little over an hour a web with twenty-two sides, the radii and circum- ferent lines at equal distances apart, except where the work had been interrupted by the observer.
 This was done in a number of ways, with view to testing the spiders power of con nected thinking. The most successful test was the insertion in the completed part of the web of pine needle. The spider at once detected it, stopped work near the cen- ter of the web and went to the place where the needle had been inserted. After oriti. cal examination of it she grasped it with her front teeth, and in trying to pull it out tore gaping rent in the web. Seeing this she stopped, examined the rent, and then gave the needle several cautious tugs, which only widened the rent. She then left it altogeths CT and attempted to repair the rent, but changed her mind. ..