The ladies of Bermuda make use of the silk of the Silk-Spider, Epeira clavipes, for sewing purposes.[1235]
The Spider-web fabric has been carried so nearly to transparency (in Hindostan) that the Emperor Aurengzebe is said to have reproved his daughter for the indelicacy of her costume, while she wore as many as seven thicknesses of it.[1236]
Astronomers employ the strongest thread of Spiders, the one, namely, that supports the web, for the divisions of the micrometer. By its ductility this thread acquires about a fifth of its ordinary length.[1237]
Topsel, in his History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, has the following, which he calls an “old and common verse:
Nos aper auditu præcellit, Aranea tactu, Vultur odoratu, lynx visu, simia gustu.
Which may be Englished thus:
To hear, the boar, to touch, the Spider us excells,
The lynx to see, the ape to taste, the vulture for the smells.”[1238]
“It is manifest,” says Moufet, “that Spiders are bred of some aereall seeds putrefied, from filth and corruption, because that the newest houses the first day they are whited will have both Spiders and cobwebs in them.”[1239] This theory of generation from putrefaction was a favorite one among the ancient writers; see the history of the Scorpion.