The spinning machinery of the spider is much finer than that of the silk-worm. The thread which he spins is made up of a multitude of threads, each one of these coming out from an exceedingly small hole in the spider’s body. You know that there is a large number of fibres or threads in a rope. So it is with the spider’s rope, for his thread that you see, small as it is, is a rope to him. It is a rope that he walks on like a rope-dancer; and you may sometimes see him swinging upon it. Sometimes, too, he lets himself down from some height, spinning the rope that holds him as he goes down. When he does this, his spinning machine must work very briskly.
Paper-making of the wasp.
The wasp has a paper factory in him. He makes his paper out of fibres of wood, which he picks off, I suppose, with his teeth, and gathers them into a bundle. He makes this into a soft pulp in some way; then, from this, he makes the paper with which he builds his nest. It is very much, you know, like the common brown paper that man makes. The wasps work in companies, and though each one can make but little paper, they all together make their nest in a very little time. The pulp from which they make their paper is very much like the pulp from which man makes paper, and which you may see any time in the large tubs or vats of a paper factory. This pulp is generally made from rags ground up fine, but lately wood has been much used. Perhaps the hint was taken from the wasps, who were the earliest paper-makers in the world.
Teeth.
Animals can not use knives and forks, as we do, in dividing up their food. They therefore have instruments given them which do this very well. Those long, sharp teeth that dogs, cats, tigers, etc., have, answer to tear to pieces the flesh they eat, as thoroughly as we can cut it up. We do not need such teeth, because with instruments contrived by man’s mind for his hands to use we cut up the food sufficiently.
Pumps of some animals.
I have told you that the elephant can draw up water into his trunk. His trunk is therefore like the tube with which we suck up water or any liquid. And it is like a pump too, for, as I shall show you in Part Third, water is raised in the pump just as it is in a tube when we suck through it. It is with a pump something like the elephant’s that many insects get the honey from the flowers. This pump is called a proboscis. It is with such an instrument that the musquito sucks up your blood. At the end of his pump he has something with which he pierces a hole in your skin, and then he pumps your blood up into his stomach. In some insects the proboscis is very long, as you see here. This is hollow, and with it the insect sucks up the honey from very deep flowers, without being obliged to go to the bottom of them.
The proboscis in some insects.
The proboscis is commonly coiled up when it is not in use. Here is the proboscis of a butterfly coiled up. The two long things above it are feelers.