Cephalcia is a genus of Web-spinning sawfly of the family Pamphillidae. Cephalcia abietis is widespread over most of the temperate part of Eurasia, living in older strands of spruce in the foothills and mountains. The larvae live communally in brownish silkensacs which they spin on branches of the host tree, falling to the ground and burrowing at the end of summer, resting in its underground chamber for up to three years before pupating. The adults fly from the middle of April to the end of June. Research Cephalcia
Cocoon is the name given to the silken case enveloping the chrysalis of several Lepidoptera, especially the silk moths. The term is also applied to the silk sack in which spiders wrap their eggs. Research Cocoon
The Lesser Wax Moth (Achoria grisella) is a moth of the family Pyralidae with a wing span of between 13 and 25 mm found in bees nests across the world producing several broods in a year. The caterpillar is a serious pest to bee keepers, covering the honeycombs with silken threads and often trapping the bees. Research Lesser Wax Moth
Pissodes is a genus of Snout Beetles (Curculionidae). The larvae live beneath the bark of various conifers and pupate in the wood just under the bark in a silkencocoon. The larvae are a serious pest to forests, damaging the trees. Research Pissodes
The Purse-Web Spider (Atypus affinis) is a species of British spider. The spider lives inside a subterranean silken tube a small part of which lies on the surface of the soil. When an insect walks over the tube the spider rushes up the tube, upside down, sinks its fans into the prey, devours it and then repairs the tube. Research Purse-Web Spider
Spider (Araneidae) is an order of animals of the class Arachnida, all having eight legs. Most spiders are terrestial, but some live in fresh water.
The spiders have a body that is divided into two parts: the head and breast, fused into one piece; and the abdomen, usually all in one piece, and only in rare cases with hints of segmentation. Between these two parts there is typically a narrow waist. The region corresponding to the head bears two pairs of mouth parts: a pair of two-jointed poison-jaws or chelicerae; and a pair of sensitive, usually six-jointed pedipalps.
All spiders have a poisonous bite, but the bite is not severe except in a few tropical forms. The poison of the bird-catching spider (Mygale) kills a bird in a few minutes. In male spiders the tip of the pedipalp is complicated, it becomes a reservoir for spermatozoa at the mating season, and is used to transfer them into the female, where they fertilise the eggs just prior to the eggs being laid. In the main the pedipalps are organs of touch, with very sensitive tactile qualities.
On the top of the head are several pairs of simple short-sighted eyes. From the region corresponding to the thorax there arise four pairs of seven-jointed legs, ending in minute curved claws, by means of which spiders grip the surface on which they creep. At the end of the abdomen there are between four and six minute appendages transformed into spinnerets, from which the silken threads emerge. Each spinneret resembles the rose of a watering-can, and contains numerous minute tubes known as spinning-spools through which the silk issues. There may be hundreds of these spinning-spools and each is connected with an internal gland which produces the silk. The gland is enclosed in a muscular envelope, the contraction of which acting like a syringe, forces the liquid silk down a duct and out at the spinning-spool. There are sometimes three kinds of glands, producing different kinds of silk, and it rests with the spider to use more or fewer at one time, thereby adjusting the thickness of the thread produced. The thread is a fusion of many jets of liquid silk, which solidifies instantly it is exposed to the air.
A small minority of spiders breathe by two pairs of lung-books; all the rest breathe by two lung-books and by two or four tracheae like those of insects. The air enters the compartments of the lung-books through an external slit flush with the skin. In the partitions between the compartments of the lung-books the blood circulates and is purified. Research Spider
Lord Thomas Fitzgerald (known as 'silken Thomas') was an Irish noble. He was born about 1518 and died in 1536. He was vice-deputy for his father, the ninth earl of Kildare, on whose arrest by Henry VIII. Lord Thomas Fitzgerald raised a formidable revolt in Ireland, which was ultimately put down by Skettington, and Lord Thomas Fitzgerald and his five uncles were hanged at Tyburn. Research Thomas Fitzgerald
An air-pump is an apparatus by means of which air or other gas may be removed from an enclosed space; or for compressing air within an enclosed space. An ordinary suction-pump for water is on the same principle as the air-pump; indeed, before water reaches the top of the pipe the air has been pumped out by the same machinery which pumps the water. An ordinary suction-pump consists essentially of a cylinder or barrel, having a valve opening from the pipe through which water is to rise and a valve opening into the outlet pipe, and a piston fitted to work in the cylinder (the outlet valve may be in the piston).
The arrangement of parts in an air-pump is quite similar. The barrel of an air-pump fills with the air which expands from the receiver (that is, the vessel from which the air is being pumped), and consequently the quantity of air expelled at each stroke is less as the exhaustion proceeds, the air getting more and more rarefied. Suppose that the receiver (so called because it receives objects to be experimented on) is exactly as large as the barrel; by the first stroke there is just half the air removed, by the second there is one-fourth, by the third there is an eighth, and so on. Suppose the barrel is one third of the receiver as to volume. On raising the piston the air which filled the receiver now fills both barrel and receiver, so that one quarter is removed at the first stroke, one quarter of the remaining three quarters is removed at the second stroke - that is, three sixteenths, and one quarter of nine sixteenths at the third stroke, and so on.
Many interesting experiments may be made with the air-pump. If an animal is placed beneath the receiver, and the air exhausted, it dies almost immediately; a lighted candle under the exhausted receiver immediately goes out. Air is thus shown to be necessary to animal life and to combustion. A bell, suspended from a silkenthread beneath the exhausted receiver, on being struck cannot be heard. If the bell be in one receiver from which the air is not exhausted, but which is within an exhausted receiver, it still cannot be heard. Air is therefore necessary to the production and to the transmission of sound. A shrivelled apple placed beneath an exhausted receiver becomes as plump as if quite fresh, being thus shown to be full of elastic air. The air-pump was invented by Otto von Guericke, burgomaster of Magdeburg, about the year 1654. Research Air-Pump
Brocade is a silken stuff, variegated with gold or silver, and enriched with flowers and figures. It was originally made by the Chinese, a manufacturing plant was established in Lyons in 1757. Research Brocade
Abbreviations
Research Cephalcia
