The fluid contents must ooze slowly through the side of those tubular threads, rolled into twisted strings, and thus render the network sticky.  It is sticky, in fact, and in such a way as to provoke surprise.  I bring a fine straw flat down upon three or four rungs of a sector.  However gentle the contact, adhesion is at once established.  When I lift the straw, the threads come with it and stretch to twice or three times their length, like a thread of India-rubber.  At last, when over-taut, they loosen without breaking and resume their original form.  They lengthen by unrolling their twist, they shorten by rolling it again; lastly, they become adhesive by taking the glaze of the gummy moisture wherewith they are filled.

In short, the spiral thread is a capillary tube finer than any that our physics will ever know.  It is rolled into a twist so as to possess an elasticity that allows it, without breaking, to yield to the tugs of the captured prey; it holds a supply of sticky matter in reserve in its tube, so as to renew the adhesive properties of the surface by incessant exudation, as they become impaired by exposure to the air.  It is simply marvellous.

The Epeira hunts not with springs, but with lime-snares.  And such lime-snares!  Everything is caught in them, down to the dandelion-plume that barely brushes against them.  Nevertheless, the Epeira, who is in constant touch with her web, is not caught in them.  Why?

Let us first of all remember that the Spider has contrived for herself, in the middle of her trap, a floor in whose construction the sticky spiral thread plays no part.  We saw how this thread stops suddenly at some distance from the centre.  There is here, covering a space which, in the larger webs, is about equal to the palm of one’s hand, a fabric formed of spokes and of the commencement of the auxiliary spiral, a neutral fabric in which the exploring straw finds no adhesiveness anywhere.

Here, on this central resting-floor, and here only, the Epeira takes her stand, waiting whole days for the arrival of the game.  However close, however prolonged her contact with this portion of the web, she runs no risk of sticking to it, because the gummy coating is lacking, as is the twisted and tubular structure, throughout the length of the spokes and throughout the extent of the auxiliary spiral.  These pieces, together with the rest of the framework, are made of plain, straight, solid thread.

But, when a victim is caught, sometimes right at the edge of the web, the Spider has to rush up quickly, to bind it and overcome its attempts to free itself.  She is walking then upon her network; and I do not find that she suffers the least inconvenience.  The lime-threads are not even lifted by the movements of her legs.

In my boyhood, when a troop of us would go, on Thursdays, {31} to try and catch a Goldfinch in the hemp-fields, we used, before covering the twigs with glue, to grease our fingers with a few drops of oil, lest we should get them caught in the sticky matter.  Does the Epeira know the secret of fatty substances?  Let us try.