The latter draws the thread from the spinneret and passes it to the inner leg, which, with a graceful movement, lays it on the radius crossed.  At the same time, the first leg measures the distance; it grips the last coil placed in position and brings within a suitable range that point of the radius whereto the thread is to be fixed.  As soon as the radius is touched, the thread sticks to it by its own glue.  There are no slow operations, no knots:  the fixing is done of itself.

Meanwhile, turning by narrow degrees, the spinstress approaches the auxiliary chords that have just served as her support.  When, in the end, these chords become too close, they will have to go; they would impair the symmetry of the work.  The Spider, therefore, clutches and holds on to the rungs of a higher row; she picks up, one by one, as she goes along, those which are of no more use to her and gathers them into a fine-spun ball at the contact-point of the next spoke.  Hence arises a series of silky atoms marking the course of the disappearing spiral.

The light has to fall favourably for us to perceive these specks, the only remains of the ruined auxiliary thread.  One would take them for grains of dust, if the faultless regularity of their distribution did not remind us of the vanished spiral.  They continue, still visible, until the final collapse of the net.

And the Spider, without a stop of any kind, turns and turns and turns, drawing nearer to the centre and repeating the operation of fixing her thread at each spoke which she crosses.  A good half-hour, an hour even among the full-grown Spiders, is spent on spiral circles, to the number of about fifty for the web of the Silky Epeira and thirty for those of the Banded and the Angular Epeira.

At last, at some distance from the centre, on the borders of what I have called the resting-floor, the Spider abruptly terminates her spiral when the space would still allow of a certain number of turns.  We shall see the reason of this sudden stop presently.  Next, the Epeira, no matter which, young or old, hurriedly flings herself upon the little central cushion, pulls it out and rolls it into a ball which I expected to see thrown away.  But no:  her thrifty nature does not permit this waste.  She eats the cushion, at first an inaugural landmark, then a heap of bits of thread; she once more melts in the digestive crucible what is no doubt intended to be restored to the silken treasury.  It is a tough mouthful, difficult for the stomach to elaborate; still, it is precious and must not be lost.  The work finishes with the swallowing.  Then and there, the Spider instals herself, head downwards, at her hunting-post in the centre of the web.

The operation which we have just seen gives rise to a reflection.  Men are born right-handed.  Thanks to a lack of symmetry that has never been explained, our right side is stronger and readier in its movements than our left.  The inequality is especially noticeable in the two hands.  Our language expresses this supremacy of the favoured side in the terms dexterity, adroitness and address, all of which allude to the right hand.