accuracy sufficient for the intended purpose, but if greater precision is desired, a wider card with longer incisions may conveniently be fastened upon the tube of a small hand telescope, and an observation of the horizon employed to secure the proper adjustment of the arrow-line to the axis of the telescope. Reaching the spot where the observation was made and marked, the observer will direct his pointer to the spot previously determined, where the meteor finally disappeared, the card and plummet vertically downwards, depending from the rod, until the plummet is at rest. Slightly twisting the rod towards the right, the plummet will be held fast by its own weight upon the edge of the card, until the card can be lowered, examined, and the altitude read off. The rod and card are now held at arm's length between the observer and the sky, the card and plummet depending as before vertically downwards from the point of the rod, between the observer and the place of disappearance of the meteor, but the handle of the rod directed onwards in the imaginary prolonged line of the meteor's apparent flight towards the horizon. The rod is thus directed, by the eye recovering the meteor's course from the landmarks of the previous evening; and being followed downwards to its intersection with the horizon, this point of intersection is marked by known objects of the view. Its bearing is to be afterwards found by compass, or by reference to an ordnance map of the locality. The card and plummet depending from the rod between the observer's eye and the place of the meteor's disappearance inform the observer at the same time of the slope downwards from horizontal at which the meteor passed from view. The card should again be tilted, by slightly turning the rod before the rod is lowered, to examine the card and read off the slope of path. A fourth observation, of the altitude of the place of apparition, completes the set of these observations, and suffices (with general remarks to prevent misapprehension) to render the description as accurate and valuable as any that can be expected at the present day to be obtained.

THE FEET OF ARACHNIDE.

BY L. LANE CLARKE.

(With a Tinted Plate.)

THE feet of Arachnidæ are more varied than those of the Diptera, the family is larger, the individuals more gifted in every way, of higher organization, and with an instinct that raises them in position to a near kindred with the upper circles of creation.

In examining the feet, we cannot help going beyond the external form to question why such admirable tools are given to what, at first sight, is an ungainly and troublesome "creeping thing."

We will begin with the foot of the common house-spider (fig. 1), which requires to be well mounted in balsam, and a good half-inch lens to see it properly; then, indeed, we perceive the two claws, toothed like a comb, with from eight to fourteen teeth, and a third simple claw, acting like a thumb to the sensitive small hand, which twists, and spins, and weaves, and builds nests for its young and snares for its food.

If we now take another foot, that of the beautiful gardenspider, the Epeira diadema, we shall see, beside the two large toothed claws, five others, also toothed, branch forward from the heel of the foot, and must assist it greatly in the formation of its geometric web and pretty cocoon, slung under a green rose-leaf in a hammock of the softest silk (fig. 2). Unlike the fly, the spider has no pulvillus, and, therefore, if able to run up a wall, it is by the action of these sharp and toothed claws on the inequalities of its surface; also by the length of its legs, and in some species by the number of joints in its tarsi, giving such pliability that the feet are capable of every variety of inflexion, sometimes even of a spiral one, whilst, from their span and equal hold of eight equidistant spaces, the body is balanced and supported in every position. The species I refer to are the harvest-men, Phalangium, whose tarsi have upwards of forty joints, and resemble antennæ.

A house-spider seems to be incapable of walking upon. glass, unless it throws up an invisible ladder of its own making, touching the glass here and there with its spinnarets, and giving its hind feet a resting-place, when it speedily escapes from a tumbler. The experiment is best made with Clubiona atrox in a champagne glass; but it happens sometimes that the spider will approve of its prison, and weave for observation both a snare and a den, and a little honey or treacle on the edge of

the glass will attract its prey, and the action of this tiny foot may be closely observed.

I have spoken of the spider's foot as "a sensitive small hand," and certainly the pulmonary spiders, or aristocrats of the tribe, possess a nervous organization which lead us to believe in very

acute senses.

They have no antennæ or known organs of hearing, yet they are sensitive to sound, and even capable of pleasure in the vibrations which cause our own nerves to thrill under the harmonies of music. Several examples are upon record; but Michelet gives one that is less known, in the spider-friend of little Berthome, who was a musical prodigy, in the year 1800. The poor child, stimulated into unnatural development, was confined for many hours a-day to practise in solitude. The music attracted a house-spider (Tegenaria domestica), which at first left its web, and stationed itself on the music-stand, then crept daily on the child's arm, and as long as the music was heard, the spider rested there; when it ceased, it retreated to its web.

This continued for many months; at last a visitor, with the unloving heart of ignorance, seeing the little creature on the boy's music, struck it to death; the child fainted-was ill of grief for three months, for he had recognized in that small living thing a fellow-sufferer and a friend.

Besides the sense of hearing, do not the eyes of spiders follow with marvellous exactness the movements of their prey ? The Salticus, tiger-like, springs with unerring certainty upon the restless fly, creeping, and sidling, and whirling round instantaneously for the fatal leap.

Does

Does not this little foot feel delicately for the silken line, and test its strength before it trusts its body to a fall? it not coil up a floating filament, and join two broken cords? or, more wonderful still, carry in its toothed claws that cable of six thousand strands from corner to corner of the angled wall, with care avoiding contact, lest it stick in a wrong place? When a spider has dropped from the ceiling, how does it ascend again so quickly? The spinnarets do not suck in again the twisted line; no, the hinder feet, using the simple claw as a thumb, rolls up the thread into a ball, and holds it ready for further use, or throws it away if not needed. The same handy foot has been observed clearing the web of an Epeira when flakes of falling soot had sullied it, gathering the dirty and broken threads, rolling them into little pellets, and flinging them to some distance, and still the busy feet tapped and tried every mesh of the snare, never breaking any, but replacing a missing link with geometric precision, and in such positions that by feeling alone could this have been accomplished, as the work was out of sight of the spider's eyes.