The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6)

Chapter 32: CHAP. 29.—THE GENERATION OF SPIDERS.

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The work assembles systematic observations on animals, insects, and trees, combining natural history with practical notes. It surveys insect forms and habits, including bees, silk‑producing worms, spiders, and parasitic species, and discusses reproduction, classification, diseases, and useful products like honey and silk. It then examines animal anatomy in detail, limb by limb and organ by organ, comparing organs, vital functions, and bodily peculiarities across species. Later sections catalogue trees and exotic plants, describing aromatic gums, spices, frankincense, myrrh, and methods for producing and testing unguents and perfumes, and noting their uses and regions of origin.

CHAP. 29.—THE GENERATION OF SPIDERS.

Spiders couple 92 backwards, and produce maggots like eggs; for I ought not to defer making some mention of this subject, seeing, in fact, that of most insects there is hardly anything else to be said. All these eggs they lay in their webs, but scattered about, as they leap from place to place while laying them. The phalangium is the only spider that lays a considerable number of them, in a hole; and as soon as ever the progeny is hatched it devours its mother, and very often the male parent as well, for that, too, aids in the process of incubation. These last produce as many as three hundred eggs, the others a smaller number. Spiders take three days to hatch their eggs. They come to their full growth in twenty-eight days.