It is sticky, in fact, and in such a way as to provoke surprise.

I bring a fine straw flat down upon three or four rungs of a sector.

However gentle the contact, adhesion is at once established.
When I lift the straw, the threads come with it and stretch to twice or three times their length, like a thread of india-rubber.

At last, when over-taut, they loosen without breaking and resume their original form.
They lengthen by unrolling their twist, they shorten by rolling it again; lastly, they become adhesive by taking the glaze of the gummy moisture wherewith they are filled.
In short, the spiral thread is a capillary tube finer than any that our physics will ever know.

It is rolled into a twist so as to possess an elasticity that allows it, without breaking, to yield to the tugs of the captured prey; it holds a supply of sticky matter in reserve in its tube, so as to renew the adhesive properties of the surface by incessant exudation, as they become impaired by exposure to the air.