CHAPTER IIIRUTH AND THE WONDERFUL SPINNERS

She throws a web upon the air and soon’Tis caught and lifted by the willing breezes,Then, freed from trouble in her light balloon,Our spinner travels wheresoe’re she pleases.—Edith M. Thomas.

She throws a web upon the air and soon

’Tis caught and lifted by the willing breezes,

Then, freed from trouble in her light balloon,

Our spinner travels wheresoe’re she pleases.

—Edith M. Thomas.

Ruth was in the garden counting colours among the hollyhocks when a little breeze hurried by.

“Come,” it said, kissing her cheek, “and hurry; things are going to happen.”

“It is my dear Wind,” cried Ruth, her eyes growing big with expectation, and, stopping just long enough to snatch up Belinda, who of course would wish to go, too, she followed where the little breeze led.

This was to a lovely spot on the edge of the wood, and one of the first things she saw was a big round spider’s web on the branches of a tall bush.

“Oh,” she said, going up closer, “who would ever think a spider could make anything like that?”

“Indeed,” said a voice which made her give a little jump, “who else but a spider could spin a web, I’d like to know? You haven’t any brains, I’m thinking.”

“Oh, please excuse me,” said Ruth. “I didn’t know you were there.”

“That’s because you don’t use your eyes properly,” was the answer of the large, handsome black and gold spider hanging head down from the centre of the big web.

Her eight long, slender legs were outstretched and rested by their tips on the bases of the taut radii, and her eight eyes were staring at Ruth.

“I saw you as soon as you came,” she said.

“I suppose you will stay to the meeting. I’m to be chair-spider.”

“Chair-spider?” repeated Ruth, slightly confused by those eight bright eyes. “And please, what meeting?”

“Why, our meeting, of course. Mrs. Cobweb Weaver says men always have a chairman at their meetings, so why shouldn’t spiders have a chair-spider, I’d like to know?”

“I suppose they should,” agreed Ruth.

“Of course we should. Considering you are a human creature, with only two eyes, two legs, and no spinnerets, you really show a great deal of sense. Now sit down on the crotch of that little tree, then you will be near me and can hear all I say. What’s that thing you are carrying?”

“Why, it’s Belinda, my doll,” explained Ruth. “I tell her everything. I think she will like your—your—meeting.”

“Well, I don’t care whether she does or not,” said Madame Spider. “Now our friends are arriving, and as you can see, with even twoeyes, they are all shapes and sizes. Long legged, short legged, plump, thin, grave and gay. All colours too—quite enough to satisfy any taste, I should say.”

Ruth looked about her in wide-eyed astonishment.

“I never knew there were so many kinds of spiders,” she said at last, “or that they had such lovely colours. I thought spiders were mostly grayish or brownish.”

“That is because you haven’t used your eyes, as I said before; but you are only like others of your kind. Such ignorance! Because some spiders are dull and colourless, most people imagine that all are so. I suppose they think, if they stop to think at all, that all kinds of webs are spun by the same kind of spider, and that all spiders spin webs.”

“Don’t they?” asked Ruth, with some hesitation, for Mrs. Spider’s indignation made her look quite fierce.

“They donot,” was the decided answer.“All spiders are spinners, but not all are web makers.”

Ruth looked puzzled.

“You see,” explained Mrs. Spider, “it all depends upon the way they catch their prey. Spider habits are as different as their looks. Some like the sun, others prefer the shade. Some live in the forest, and others with the house people. Many make their home in the bark of trees, and under stones.”

“I’ve seen that kind,” interrupted Ruth, eagerly, “and when you lift up the stone they run awfully fast. Sometimes they have a funny little gray bundle, just as the ants carry their babies. Maybe it’s their babies too. Is it?”

“Well, they will be babies if nothing happens. Those gray bundles are cocoons full of eggs. The mother spins the cocoon of silk from her own body.”

“Oh, now, I understand. They are spinners, but they don’t have any web. Isn’t that it?”

“Exactly. They do not need a web. They spring on their prey when the prey isn’t looking. We call them hunters, also runners.”

“Well, theycanrun,” said Ruth.

“‘THE MOTHER SPINS THE COCOON OF SILK FROM HER OWN BODY’”

“The flower spiders are not web spinners either,” went on Madame Spider, who seemed to like nothing better than to talk. “They live among flowers, and eat the visiting insects. You can see some of them over there. Talk about colours! They are gay enough, just like flowers themselves. Perhaps you can guess why.”

Ruth thought a few minutes.

“Well,” she said, “if they were the same colour as the flower they couldn’t be seen so easily. I saw something walk out of an ear of corn once, and it looked like a kernel ofcorn on eight legs. It was awful funny. Was that a spider?”

“Very likely. We are wonderful enough for anything. I suppose you have never heard of the trapdoor spider and his silk-lined burrow, with its little hinged door, nor of the spider who lives under the water, in a tiny silken house, which she spins herself, and fills with air carried down, bubble by bubble, from the surface. Don’t look as though you didn’t believe me. It isn’t polite. I am telling you the truth. Very likely you’ll doubt me when I say that we sail in balloons, of our own making, and cross streams of water on bridges, which we can fashion as we need them—that is, we orb weavers do, for, after all, we stand at the head of the spider clan. Did you know I was an orb weaver?”

“I—I—haven’t thought about it,” said Ruth, slowly, for the question had come very suddenly, “but I’d like you to go on telling me things. Do you always hang withyour head down? I should think it would make you dizzy.”

“Dizzy? Whoever heard of such a thing? Of course I keep my head down, and my toes on my telegraph lines. Then I can feel the least tremble in any one of them, and I’m pretty quick to run where I know my dinner is waiting. Sometimes I don’t hurry quite so fast. That is when the line trembles in a way which lets me know that something big has been caught. Indeed, there are times when I bite the threads around what might have been my dinner, and let it go; for it is wiser to lose a meal than run the chance of being a meal.” And Mrs. Orb Weaver winked, not with one eye only, but with all eight. “Now it is time to talk to the company,” she added, “as I am chair-spider.”

She said the last words in a loud voice, intended for all to hear; then she looked around to see if any one objected.

“They had better not,” she said to Ruth, and in a louder voice, added: “My friends,we are not appreciated. Men talk about the wonderful bees, the wonderful wasps, the wonderful ants, but few of them say anything about the wonderful spiders. Now we are wonderful, too, and we are honest, and we are industrious. We eat flies and lots of other pests, and we do not hurt orchards, or steal into pantries, or chew up clothes. Indeed, we do man no harm at all. But is he grateful? Tell me that. I’ll tell you he isn’t. Ask Mrs. Cobweb Weaver if there isn’t always some broom sweeping down the nice web she makes. I wonder she doesn’t hate a broom. No, my friends, man is not grateful. Even those who call themselves our friends are ready to pop us into bottles, or boxes, whenever they get a chance. They give us what they call a painless death in the cause of science. Now we would rather live in our own cause. At least I would.”

Mrs. Orb Weaver had become so excited that her whole web was shaking violently.

Ruth was excited, too.

“It’s rather horrid to do that way,” she said, “but maybe people don’t know about you. I didn’t until to-day. The wonderful things I mean, and I want to know lots more. How your web is made and—and—everything. Please tell me.”

“Why, certainly,” answered Mrs. Orb Weaver readily. “To begin with, my web is made of silk.”

“Who didn’t know that?” snapped a running spider.

“I didn’t,” answered Ruth.

“You! And who are you, pray?”

“Be quiet,” commanded Mrs. Orb Weaver. “She is my guest, and anything she wishes to know I shall be happy to tell her. Now, to get on, our webs are made of silk, and the silk comes from our own bodies, through little tubes called spinnerets. It is soft at first, but gets harder when it reaches the air, just like caterpillar silk. We guide each thread with our hind feet, making heavier strands by twisting a number of fine ones together.Of course, we spin the foundation lines first. They are the ones which fix the web to the bush. Then the ray lines, those like the spokes in a wheel. They are all heavy strands, and only after they are finished do we spin the real snare, the lines which run around. They are very fine, and are covered with a sort of glue, for they have to catch and hold the flies and other insects that come on the web. We orb weavers are the only ones who have this glue. No other spiders use it. They trust to the meshes of the web to entangle their prey.”

“But why don’t the sticky parts catch you too?” asked Ruth, who had been listening with eager attention. “I’ve seen you run all over your web and——”

“We never get caught. Of course not,” finished Mrs. Orb Weaver. “And why? That’s a question. The wise men don’t know, and if we do, we are not telling. Now I am getting hungry, so I think I will tell alittle story, then we will adjourn. I am sorry there isn’t time for Mrs. Funnel Weaver to speak.”

“But there is,” declared a large brown spider, whose body looked as though it were set on a framework of legs. “I mean to speak too—if only to point out all those webs in the grass.”

“Oh, I’ve often seen webs like that,” said Ruth. “They are lovely with dew on them. But why do you call yourself a funnel weaver?”

“I don’t!” she snapped. “The men, who think they know everything, gave me that name, because at one side of my web is a funnel-shaped tube. It is our way to escape our enemies. We run through it into the grass when something too big for us to manage gets into our web.”

“I generally make my web in houses,” said a small, slender-legged, light-coloured spider.

She spoke in a hurry, as though she wasafraid some one might stop her before she finished. “I have cousins who like fields and fences and outbuildings, but our webs are all the same pattern. Not so regular as yours, Mrs. Orb Weaver, but very fine and delicate.”

“Oh, everybody knows you, Mrs. Cobweb Weaver,” said a voice from a nearby twig. “Now if you are speaking of legs——”

“We are not,” answered Mrs. Orb Weaver, “and I should like to know how you came here.”

“On my legs of course. Don’t you think they are long enough? And though I can neither spin nor weave, I am your relation, and I have as much right to be here as you have. I——”

“Why, it’s Daddy Long Legs,” interrupted Ruth, with a friendly smile of recognition. “I like daddies.”

“Well, I am not saying anything about my legs,” remarked a fat little spider, as Daddy tried to bow to Ruth, “though I have eightof them. I usually travel in a balloon, which I make myself. Oh, I tell you, it is fine to go

“Sailing mid the golden airIn skiffs of yielding gossamer.”

“Sailing mid the golden air

In skiffs of yielding gossamer.”

“‘WHY, IT’S DADDY LONG LEGS’”

“Poetry,” said a handsome spider, wheeling back and forth on a silken bridge swung between two bushes. “I could have learned some too, but I didn’t know it was allowed. Of course I can build bridges. Who is asking that idiotic question? You?” And eight glaring eyes were fixed upon Ruth. “Maybe you don’t know that spiders were the first bridge builders and when men suspend their great bridges to-day they follow our ideas and ways, without giving us the least credit; but that’s the way with men.”

“Well, we can’t expect to regulate men,” answered Mrs. Orb Weaver, “and, besides, it’s time to tell my story, and then you will know why we get our name, and why we are such wonderful spinners. Now listen, all of you:

“Once upon a time——”

Ruth chuckled contentedly. All nice stories began, “Once upon a time.” “Please go on,” she whispered eagerly.

“Then don’t interrupt me,” said Mrs. Orb Weaver, and she began again:

“Once upon a time, ever so long ago, there lived in a beautiful land called Greece a maiden named Arachne. Arachne was not only fair to look upon, but she could also spin and weave in a fashion so wondrously fine that all who saw her work said that the great Athena herself must have been her teacher. Now this surely was praise enough, but Arachne was vain. ‘Nay,’ she said, ‘no one has taught me, and gladly will I weave with the great goddess herself, and thus provethe skill to be all my own.’ Her words only shocked all who heard them, but Arachne cared not, and again repeated her wish to try her skill with Athena.

“So it happened that as she sat spinning one day an old woman, leaning on a staff, stopped by her loom.

“‘Child,’ she said in a gentle voice, ‘a great gift is yours.’

“Arachne tossed her head, and answered scornfully:

“‘Well do I know it, yet Athena dares not try her skill with mine.’

“‘Dares not?’ repeated the old dame, in tones that should have made Arachne tremble. ‘Dares not, say you? Foolish maiden, be warned in time.’

“But Arachne was too proud to yield, and she still persisted, even though the old dame had dropped her mantle, and stood revealed as the great goddess herself.

“‘Be it so,’ said Athena, sternly, and both began to weave.

“For hours their shuttles flew in and out. Arachne’s work was wonderful, but for her theme she had chosen the weakness and the failure of the gods. Athena pictured forth their greatness. The sky was her loom, and from the rainbow she chose her colours, and when her work was finished and its splendours spanned the heavens, Arachne realized that she had failed.

“Ashamed and miserable, she sought to hang herself in the meshes of her web.

“‘Nay, rash maid,’ spoke Athena; ‘thou shalt not die, but live to be the mother of a great race, the most wonderful spinners on earth.’

“Even as Athena spoke, Arachne grew smaller and smaller, until not a maiden, but a spider, hung from that marvellous web.

“And now, my friends,” finished Mrs. Orb Weaver, “need I tell you that we are the wonderful race of which Athena spoke, and needIadd that we have inherited Arachne’s marvellous skill, and are truly themost wonderful spinners on earth? Now I am hungry and the meeting is adjourned.”

“So am I,” added Daddy Long Legs, “not adjourned, but hungry, and, by the way, do you imagine any one believes that old story?”

He winked at Ruth, and then moved away as fast as his long legs would carry him.

CHAPTER IVMRS. MOSQUITO AND HER KIN

“Thou art welcome to the town, but why come hereTo bleed a fellow poet gaunt like thee?Alas! the little blood I have is dear,And thin will be the banquet drawn from me.”—Bryant.

“Thou art welcome to the town, but why come here

To bleed a fellow poet gaunt like thee?

Alas! the little blood I have is dear,

And thin will be the banquet drawn from me.”

—Bryant.

“That horrid mosquito,” said Ruth, waking with a start, and slapping her cheek.

“Aha! you didn’t get me that time,” answered a thin, high-pitched voice!

Ruth sat up. She had been asleep under the apple tree, but she was quite awake now.

“Where are you?” she asked, “and are you really talking?”

“I seem to be,” answered the mosquito,“though you tried to finish me just now. I bear no ill-will, though. I am quite used to being an outlaw. What is more, I don’t intend to be any better. I shall go on biting people as much as I please. I must have my meals as well as the rest of the world. People seem to forget that fact.”

“But just biting people——” began Ruth.

“It isn’t just biting,” put in the mosquito. “It really isn’t biting at all. I have a sharp little instrument to pierce the skin of the fellow I choose for my dinner, and the best kind of sucking pump to pump up his blood. That’s the way I get my meals. It is different with my mate. He is a harmless sort of fellow. He can’t even sing, and he likes such baby food as the nectar of flowers. Now tell me why I am different from other insect musicians.”

She fixed her big eyes on Ruth, who moved uneasily, and answered with not a little hesitation:

“I—I—really don’t know.”

“I’m a female. That’s why. In all the orders, so far as I know, the singers are males. Naturally I am proud of being an exception. Well, you didn’t know that. Do you know why I don’t care for science?”

“It is just like an examination,” thought Ruth, and again she answered.

“I don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t,” said Mrs. Mosquito. “Is there anything youdoknow? Well, I suppose I must tell you. I don’t care for science, because it interferes too much. Once upon a time men were our friends. We not only had nice juicy meals from them, but we had their rain barrels as nurseries for our children. Of course, what they said about us, when we came too near them, was not always complimentary, but a mosquito, attending strictly to business, doesn’t mind a little thing like that. But now come these fellows who know so much, or think they know so much. We carry malaria, they say, whatever that is, and the rain barrel mustgo, because it helps to breed mosquitoes. Not only that, these interfering fellows seem to spend their time thinking up ways to finish us. Well, I sting them every chance I get.”

“But alas! the rain barrel is going. I was hatched in one of the few to be found in these sad days. I was a lively baby, I can tell you. Young mosquitoes are called wrigglers and, true to my name, I wriggled for all I was worth. Now, when you know that my mother had laid something like three hundred eggs, and all had hatched into wrigglers as lively as myself, you can imagine the time there was in that old rain barrel.”

“But why,” asked Ruth “are you called wrigglers when you are young, and mosquitoes when you are grown up?”

“Why are you called baby when you are born, girl when you are half grown, and woman when you are quite grown?” replied Mrs. Mosquito, and Ruth said no more.

“Now,” went on Mrs. Mosquito, “I should like to tell you more about wrigglers, howthey stand on their heads and breathe with their tails, and how they shed their skins when they become full-grown mosquitoes, but I haven’t time. The others are coming.”

“Others?” repeated Ruth. “What others?”

“The members of the Diptera order of course,” answered Mrs. Mosquito, with an important air. “You see, I found you sleeping under the tree and I knew you wanted to learn about the things that are worth while, and as we are very worth while, I sent a friend to tell all the members of our order to meet in this spot.”

“Exactly what that young mosquito told me,” said Mrs. Hessian Fly, buzzing up excitedly.

She was a dusky-winged creature, scarcely more than an eighth of an inch long.

“What is the Diptera anyhow?”

“Why, you are one,” explained Mrs. Mosquito, with a superior smile. “It is quite a tax to know things for everybody,” she said to Ruth, “but you see I am around men somuch I learn a great deal. I once attended a meeting of the men who think themselves wise. I wasn’t invited, you understand, but I went, and I attracted much attention too. Well, this is what I heard: The audience will please listen, it concerns you all:

“‘The members of the order Diptera have two gauzy wings and two thread-like organs with knobs at the end in the place where most other insects have a second pair of wings. Their mouth is framed for sucking, and sometimes for piercing. Only a few make cocoons. Their larvæ are called maggots, and they have no legs. Some are vegetable eaters, some carnivorous, and many are scavengers.’ They said all that about us, and maybe it’s true, but I tell you every man in that meeting felt my sting.”

“I don’t care what they say,” remarked Mrs. Hessian Fly. “To be talked about shows our importance, though I have never doubted mine. My family is a Revolutionary one, as my ancestors came over with theHessians. Of course you have heard of them?”

“No, I am only interested in the people who live now,” answered Mrs. Mosquito.

“Well, I live now,” said Mrs. Hessian Fly, “and I am interesting enough for any use. I don’t make galls like so many flies, but simply lay my eggs in young blades of wheat, and when my little red babies hatch, they have only to crawl down and fasten themselves to the tender stalk, just below the ground. Don’t they love the sap, though? A field of wheat looks pretty sick after they have worked on it a while. Sometimes the wheat midges help them and then it is good-by to the wheat. Mrs. Wheat Midge, you know, lays her eggs in the opening flower of the grain, and her babies eat the pollen and ovule. You may guess what happens then.”

“I think it is real horrid to do that,” said Ruth.

“And what do you know about it, pray?”retorted Mrs. Hessian Fly. “We must all eat to live.”

“We certainly must,” said a house fly, flitting up with a loud buzz. “I have just escaped with my life. A cook wanted to take it because I tried to lay some eggs on her meat. What better place could a fly ask, I’d like to know? If Mrs. Blow Fly had been there, she would have put her eggs on that meat, screen or no screen. She is a most determined body and she can drop her eggs through the finest mesh, if she makes up her mind to do it.”

“Is Mrs. Blow Fly that big, buzzing, blue-bodied thing that is such a botheration?” asked Ruth.

“She’s big and blue, and she buzzes, or talks, with her wings, as we all do,” answered Mrs. House Fly, with dignity, “but she isn’t a thing. She’s a fly. There are hundreds of different kinds of flies, I’d like you to understand. The kind like me live in houses, but some prefer stables. They seem to liketo stay with horses and cows, and are rather common. They have beautiful eyes, though, and plenty of them. Would you believe it, my head is nearly all eyes? I have thousands of tiny ones in my two big ones, not to mention the three single ones at the top of my head.”

“Gracious!” said Ruth. “No wonder it is so hard to catch you. But doesn’t it make you dizzy when you walk upside down, and how do you keep from falling?”

“Of course we don’t get dizzy and it is easy enough to keep from falling if you have pads and fine hairs on your feet. They just hold you to the place you are standing on. Men seem to consider this quite a wonderful thing. One of them has written some poetry about it. This is how it goes:

“What a wonderful fellow is Mr. Fly,He goes where he pleases, low or high,And can walk just as well with his feet to the skyAs I can on the floor.”

“What a wonderful fellow is Mr. Fly,

He goes where he pleases, low or high,

And can walk just as well with his feet to the sky

As I can on the floor.”

“Say,” spoke up a slim, narrow-winged creature with abnormally long legs, “I’mone of your relations, though I can’t walk upside down.”

“You?” repeated Mrs. House Fly, contemptuously. “Why, you can’t walk decently right side up.”

“It is true,” sighed the crane fly. “I haven’t even the grace of Daddy Long Legs, for:

“My six long legs all here and thereOppress my bosom with despair.”

“My six long legs all here and there

Oppress my bosom with despair.”

“Well, I don’t care about your legs,” said Mrs. House Fly. “I was speaking of my relations—mysmartrelations. All are not smart. I have some who need only bite the twig of a tree and lay their eggs there, and what do you suppose happens? A round ball grows over the spot and men call it a gall, but it is really a tiny house for my cousin’s babies. I have another cousin, whose name is Cecidomyia strobiloides. It is long for such a tiny creature, but she bears up very well under it.”

“I couldn’t ever pronounce it,” said Ruth. “What does she do, please?”

“She flies to a willow tree in the Spring, before the leaves are out, and with a spear on the end of her body she cuts a gash in the tip end of the bud, just where it is most tender and juicy. She lays an egg in the gash; then goes to another twig, and does the same thing, until she has laid as many eggs as she wishes. When her babies hatch, they do not look at all like their gauzy-winged little gray mother, nor do they care for sun or air. In fact, they never stir from their cells. They can eat, though, and the sap of the tree is their food.”

“You all seem to think a good deal of eating,” said Ruth.

“Of course. Isn’t that what we are hatched for? But my cousin’s babies have lost their appetites by the Fall, and then they go to sleep. They wake up in the Spring, and, strange to say, they have grown exactly like their mother and are ready to lay eggs on some more willow twigs. Very likely the willow tree does not care to have them do it,for the twig where their cradle is does not grow into a branch as the tree meant it should. Instead, the small leaves just crowd upon each other, until they look like a green pine cone.”

“I hope it will never happen to my willow tree,” said Ruth; “but please tell me more things. They are very interesting.”

“Interesting? I should say so. Indeed, I could go on talking all day, and not tell you one half the things we can do. But life is too uncertain to waste it all in talking.”

“Life is certainly full of accidents,” buzzed a big horse fly. “I’m here to tell Mrs. Mosquito, if she is looking for the messenger she sent out a while ago, she’d better make up her mind never to see her again. She went too near a horrid warty toad, and you can guess the rest.”

“We can,” sighed Mrs. Mosquito. “If it isn’t frogs, it’s toads and——”

“Often it’s birds,” finished Mrs. Horse Fly, “and they are the worst of all.”

“Such subjects remind me that I am hungry,” said Mrs. Mosquito, “and I’m off to find a juicy somebody for dinner. I think I shall lay some eggs too.”

“I wonder if it was my toad who ate that mosquito,” thought Ruth, as she watched the audience fly away.

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