Dolomedes Minor

This is a nursery web spider’s nest.

When I was about 10, Mr Andrews told us that the mother spider spins this nest on growing plants, she lays her eggs in the web, seals it and hides nearby. The plant must grow and the eggs hatch into hundreds of tiny spiders; these two events must coincide so that when the spiders are exactly the right size the growing plants grow apart and open the web so the babies escape to live their life cycle. The mother is only nearby to protect the nursery as best she can. Eventually the next generations repeat the cycle.

1. How does every generation know how to build such an elaborate nest?
2. How do they know the different plants growth rate will open the web at just the right time and not too early nor too late?
3. How does instinct really work?

I don’t know but please stand and marvel at the Creator’s skill next time you see one.

Who doesn't have an umbilicus?

In Melbourne I was taken to the city art gallery. In art my edumication is sadly lacking so I copied the people there and wandered from picture to picture. I was looking at what appeared to me to be pen drawings from, the write up said, the 15th Century. Why had they kept them so long? There must be something outstanding amongst them for sure.

I came across Adam & Eve. Now I was on firmer ground. I examined it for some indication of what the artist thought about Adam & Eve. It surprised me that they both had an umbilicus ~ tummy button. If there were anything to set Adam & Eve apart from the rest of mankind forever, the absence of this feature would be it; any naked person could be drawn with a fig leaf, a snake and long hair in a garden but one thing that Adam & Eve would not have had was a tummy button.

I told Jeremy when I got back and he fell about laughing, “Only you, Mum, would notice that!”

Really?