The eventual regularity of the work suggests that the radii are spun in the same order in which they figure in the web, each following immediately upon its next neighbour.  Matters pass in another manner, which at first looks like disorder, but which is really a judicious contrivance.  After setting a few spokes in one direction, the Epeira runs across to the other side to draw some in the opposite direction.  These sudden changes of course are highly logical; they show us how proficient the Spider is in the mechanics of rope-construction.  Were they to succeed one another regularly, the spokes of one group, having nothing as yet to counteract them, would distort the work by their straining, would even destroy it for lack of a stabler support.  Before continuing, it is necessary to lay a converse group which will maintain the whole by its resistance.  Any combination of forces acting in one direction must be forthwith neutralized by another in the opposite direction.  This is what our statics teach us and what the Spider puts into practice; she is a past mistress of the secrets of rope-building, without serving an apprenticeship.

One would think that this interrupted and apparently disordered labour must result in a confused piece of work.  Wrong:  the rays are equidistant and form a beautifully-regular orb.  Their number is a characteristic mark of the different species.  The Angular Epeira places 21 in her web, the Banded Epeira 32, the Silky Epeira 42.  These numbers are not absolutely fixed; but the variation is very slight.

Now which of us would undertake, off-hand, without much preliminary experiment and without measuring-instruments, to divide a circle into a given quantity of sectors of equal width?  The Epeirae, though weighted with a wallet and tottering on threads shaken by the wind, effect the delicate division without stopping to think.  They achieve it by a method which seems mad according to our notions of geometry.  Out of disorder they evolve order.

We must not, however, give them more than their due.  The angles are only approximately equal; they satisfy the demands of the eye, but cannot stand the test of strict measurement.  Mathematical precision would be superfluous here.  No matter, we are amazed at the result obtained.  How does the Epeira come to succeed with her difficult problem, so strangely managed?  I am still asking myself the question.

The laying of the radii is finished.  The Spider takes her place in the centre, on the little cushion formed of the inaugural signpost and the bits of thread left over.  Stationed on this support, she slowly turns round and round.  She is engaged on a delicate piece of work.  With an extremely thin thread, she describes from spoke to spoke, starting from the centre, a spiral line with very close coils.  The central space thus worked attains, in the adults’ webs, the dimensions of the palm of one’s hand; in the younger Spiders’ webs, it is much smaller, but it is never absent.  For reasons which I will explain in the course of this study, I shall call it, in future, the ‘resting-floor.’