How long we were occupied in this mad and daring flight, I can not even conjecture. We reached, at length, our destination; but, alas! we had no sooner done so, than the invaluable animal that had conveyed us thither dropped down dead!
My companion and I alighted. I walked up to where the poor animal lay, and was busy deploring her fate, when I heard a struggle at a short distance. I turned quickly round, and beheld the mysterious being with whom I had ridden so fatal a journey, in the custody of two powerful looking men.
"Ha, ha! I thought he would make for this here place," said one of them. "He still has a hankering after his mother's grave. When he got away before, we nabbed him here."
The mystery was soon cleared up. The gentleman had escaped from a lunatic asylum, and was both deaf and dumb. The death of his mother, a few years before, had caused the mental aberration.
The horrors of the night are impressed as vividly upon my memory as though they had just occurred. The expenses of the journey were all defrayed, and I was presented with a handsome gratuity. I never ceased, however, to regret the loss of the favorite mare.
Urged by the increased demand for the threads which the silk-worm yields, many ingenious men have endeavored to turn the cocoons of other insects to account. In search of new fibres to weave into garments, men have dived to the bottom of the sea, to watch the operations of the pinna and the common mussel. Ingenious experimentalists have endeavored to adapt the threads which hold the mussel firmly to the rock, to the purposes of the loom; and the day will probably arrive when the minute thread of that diminutive insect, known as the money-spinner, will be reeled, thrown, and woven into fabrics fit for Titania and her court.
In the early part of last century, an enthusiastic French gentleman turned his attention to spiders' webs. He discovered that certain spiders not only erected their webs to trap unsuspecting flies, but that the females, when they had laid their eggs, forthwith wove a cocoon, of strong silken threads, about them. These cocoons are known more familiarly as spiders' bags. The common webs of spiders are too slight and fragile to be put to any use; but the French experimentalist in question, Monsieur Bon, was led to believe that the cocoons of the female spiders were more solidly built than the mere traps of the ferocious males. Various experiments led M. Bon to adopt the short-legged silk spider as the most productive kind. Of this species he made a large collection. He employed a number of persons to go in search of them; and, as the prisoners were brought to him, one by one, he inclosed them in separate paper cells, in which he pricked holes to admit the air. He kept them in close confinement, and he observed that their imprisonment did not appear to affect their health. None of them, so far as he could observe, sickened for want of exercise; and, as a jailer, he appears to have been indefatigable, occupying himself catching flies, and delivering them over to the tender mercies of his prisoners. After a protracted confinement in these miniature Bastiles, the grim M. Bon opened the doors, and found that the majority of his prisoners had beguiled their time in forming their bags. Spiders exude their threads from papillæ or nipples, placed at the hinder part of their body. The thread, when it leaves them, is a glutinous liquid, which hardens on exposure to the air. It has been found that, by squeezing a spider, and placing the finger against its papillæ, the liquid of which the thread or silk is made may be drawn out to a great length.