Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1901-05-16
ALL SPIDERS SPIN.
But the industrious Insects Do Not
Operate the Way Most Artists
Picture Them.

All spiders spin, but not all of then
spin snares those orbed and radiated
webs that we see pictured so many
times and every time pictured wrong,
But hat only goes to show that the
lower animals are not the only ones
that possess instinct. / think it will
be generally agreed hat artists may
be classed among the higher animals,
says Harvey Sutherland, in Ainslee's.
At any rate, their instinct is to draw
a thing, not as it is, but as it appears
to a man that doesn't know very
much about anything in particular.
So he lays off his picture OF a spiders
web with a pair of dividers, and peo-
pie marvel at the spiders mathemat-
ical sense, whereas a spider doesn't
bother her head with any such fool
ishness. She puts her lines where
she thinks they will do the most good
! regardless of their distance apart.
Here of late, though, I think [ have
noticeda littleimprovement in artists.
They have begun to notice that the
spider always stands head downward
in her web, if it be a perpendicular
one, and if it is horizontal hangs
back downward. Some of these fiat.
web spiders can hardly walk right
side up. But the spider of art never
has more than six legs, while the real
spider has eight, and the spider of
art often has three sections of the
body, while the real spider never has
more than two. The head and chest
are in m department., so to speak.
There are their eyes, from four to
eight in number, and disposed in diff
ferent patterns according to their po-
litical affiliations; their jaws, which
work sidewise, instead of up and
down; their poison bag, and a few
other arrangements; and in the alb
domen or silk department T the
heart Ga banana-shaped affair.", the
liver, the slit and tubes that do duty
for lungs, and the ~spinnerets. These
last are warty-looking affairs that
may be spread apart and brought to-
gether exactly like the thumb and
fingers of the hand. Each wart is
! covered with hundreds of little hol-
low hairs, through which is expressed
a gummy liquid that turns to silk
when it dries. Mrs. Spider slaps her
spinnerets broad against the wall and
sticks fast 1 don't know how many
hundreds of fine filaments. Then she
pulls away the s%pinnerets and shuts
them up, and all of those fine fla
ments melt into n rope, in thick
ness about one-fve-thousandth of an
inch. Insects silk is a simple thread;
spiders is compound.
Poverty of the English Language.
England has not been very success,
full of late with the coinage of words.
which forms the fascinating subject
of one of this months magazine ar
ticles. Bicycle" is a hybrid which use
has made t~olerable; automobile" still
causes a shudder. But there is a gap
which is even more curious than the
mistakes. 1t is not unusual in Eng
land for a young man to be engaged
to a young woman, or even a middle
aged woman But the English lam
guage has not succeeded in producing
a word to express the relation of the
man to the oma You cannot call
him her young man." nor her sin
tended" That would set the teeth on
edge. Mash is an exploded vulgar
ism, and 'bloke" expresses nothing
but masculine humanity, and that
badly. We must fall back to the
French "fance." Yet one would ex-
peet to find an English name for the
thousands of English lovers. Lover"
is unfortunately a libel on the individ-
ual.-London Chronicle.