The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-11-24
Little Beasts of Prev
BY j. H. PAUL NATURE

Spiders are chief among little beasts
of prey. They feed on the insects.
They are not insects themselves, but
are like lions and tigers to the insect
world. The hunting spiders run on the
ground or on plants, and catcW their
prey by springing upon it as the larger
carnivora do. The cobweb spiders make
nests for catching insects, and live in
the web or In a nest nearby. There are
vast numbers and many families of
each great class. Their habits are fas-
cinating, their actions intelligent, their
reseurcefuness wonderful. They pre-
sent an easy field for observation, lead
ing to the discovery of the marvellous
ways of these little folk" / should
assign them by preference TO the sew
enth grade in schools. but our fifth
graders did some work on this inter-
esting group in October, and / give a
summary of it here for the benefit of
fellow teachers.
Work In the School Room.
1t is still possible to collect the eggs
of spiders, though the best time to be-
gin observing these curious creatures
is in September. The eggs are laid in
little bags of hanging spider web, or
in cracks, under boards. scales of bark.
or stones. The eggs should be kept in
The fifth grade pupils in Miss Nellie
Herman's class at the training school
captured number of spiders early last
month. These were put into chalk
boxes with glass or wire fronts. con-
tanning some earth, tWfgs and leaves
and were fed upon flies. After several
weeks Of almost daily observation of
their ways by the children, l requested
that they tell i'm writing what they had
~.
drawings submitted by these pupils a
few have been selected and are repro
Guced herewith, the drawings without
any alteration, the essays with only
the change of an occasional word, the
suppression of certain "ands," etc, but
otherwise substantially as written by
the pupils.
Watching the Spider.
l watched a very large gray spider,
with long legs and large head. 1t
had its home in the weeds and was
clinging to a tall weed. 1t had eight
legs. and I noticed that there were
little hairs all over them. Spiders build
their webs I'm the fall. They have to
eat most OF the time, because what
they eat goes TO make the thread out
of which they weave their webs.
One web does not last the spider all
the time, because when an insect gets
caught in the web, it breaks ii and per-
haps the spider running about would
break it, too.
The spiders have a head and an alb
domen. This is different from the in
sects, because the insects have three
parts to their bodies.
Helen Ball. Fifth Grade.
All spiders have eight legs fastened
TO their head part. They have eight
eyes, too. zone small family have only
six eyes.-J. H. P) We have ten spi-
ders in our room, two with little. tiny
heads and great, big bodies. One has
spun a kind of cocoon in the top of the
box. We think the cocoon is full Of
eggs. but we don't know for sure. We
put leaves and grasshoppers in their
boxes but now they are acting as If
they are dead. On Saturday / came up
10 the school garden to get some toma-
toes. and as I was going home I saw
gray spider. / tried to get it, but it
went down into a hole.
The female spider eats the male spi-
der It will spin a web, then go up in
the middle of the web. The male spi-