Weihaiwei, Sept. 20—Before this stormy summer season ends I would like to make a few more notes about spiders. An engineer friend has helped me, and while I watched Gertrude and Zinnia in my garden he watched a spider in his verandah. Some of his results were quite amazing, for he tells me that his spider had at times three or more webs on the "chain store" system. and took toll from each: she used the wind-blown and "drop and swing" methods for her main supports ihe started her web a little more than half way down tke full circle and completed the lower half first: she commenced "webbing" from the outside ring, putting in cross supports as she went along. All of which confirms my observations that there is nothing regular about the method, which must depend upon atmospheric conditions from time to time. So now for Gertrude and Zinnia.
Gertrude (she of the telephone wire) sticks to the wind-blown method: if the winds are too strong—as they have been—she does not even worry about a proper web: a little house-spider-like webbing between the wires will keep the wolf from the door. In milder weather the main direction of the web changes daily with the wind, because it is destroyed daily by large inst X 40 mention gardeners. Gertrude is still with me and I can see her
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.