Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 25 September 1915
This morning early the lane leading to the wheat stubble was full of mist, and the uncut grass at its sides was so heavy with dew that walking through it you were wetted to above the ankles. The hedge is high, there are thorns ripe red with bunches of haws, purple vetches climbing among them, mullein in between, hazel boughs overhanging the ditches, dwarf sycamore behind and wild hops clinging to the lower branches. Going through a wide gap one became aware of something like a thin, damp veil drawn across the face, a slight feeling only just perceptible. It was the fine web of a giant brown spider; the insect himself was soon running across one’s shoulder and swinging off to the nearest bush ready to spin again. As the sun penetrated the mist and glistened in the dew you were aware of many of these webs, spun in broad hollows; their main hawser, as it were, from which the whole spun circle tautened down, stretched for a distance of nine feet or more from point to point of two boughs. How did one small creature, without wings, span the open space, carrying his finer than silken thread with him? Infinitely patient, the dispossessed spider presently began to lower himself from the point of a leaf upon which the end of his cord was roved, then swinging to the other side he climbed, and by some kind of intuition, if not by sight, chose a standing opposite, so that the mainstay from which the web would presently depend was like a hanging and swaying light bridge thrown across an abyss. From this strong rope he worked and spun one of the most perfectly shaped structures that nature could show.
Continue reading…
Source: Guardian Environment