One of the most curious of the industrial recesses to be seen in operation at the e: if bition will be the spinning of spider-silk, in the Madagascar building behind the Trocadéro, The idea of utilising spiderwebs for purposes undreamed of by the Insect is no new one. Early in the eight-tenth century, Réaumur showed that spider-thread could be made to answer the sume purposes as ordinary silk, but as it Mould have required the united efforts of 700,000 spiders to produce one pound of Auk, the idea was naturally condemned as impractical. A few years ago, it was Tovived by an ingenious French priest in Madagascar, who had seen the natives obtain silk, in a rough and ready way, from the big Madagascar spider, or lalabé. The female of this species, ity that "whenever specially attractive events, thing like 4,000 yards of filament before ' attendance, take place, the number of PATER the foal tribute to Nature, ant father Camboné, by means of a rough winding machine, obtained. quite enough thread to show that the spider em be exploited by man, in Madagascar, if not in europe. A machine which is said to answer all practical purposes since been constructed by a French official at Antananarivo, and will be sown in operation at the Exhibition. The apparatus comprises a sal frame containing 1 small boxes, in each of which a spider is placed on its back and held in position by a small guillotine shutter. The twelve filaments are passed through an eyelet and over a reel worked by means of pedal. A separate contrivance twists the twelve filaments into a single thread, and each thread is afterwards doubled, to give the necessary strength for weaving. As soon as a spider ceases to produce filament, the insect is replaced by another, without stopping the machine, and is' turned out to graze, if the expression be permissible, for about ten days, end of which period it can be again used. The tests: applier to spi ler-silk show it to be slightly less elastic than ordinary silk but a title stronger. grain is much finer and the natural colour, a tilliant golden, is far superior. One of the exhibits is to be a canopy, made entirely from spider-silk and said to be 'a marvel of beauty.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.