For those who worry over their liability to suffer stress I would recommend an early morning walk through an autumnal meadow, if their geographical circumstances permit. Of course, this is practicable only for those lucky individuals whose lifestyle is rural and not urban, but is well worth consideration and is the royal road to relaxation. While the dew is still hanging on the grass and the hedgerows, the morning sun picks out the dewdrop-jewelled webs of countless spiders. Their number always comes as a surprise, even to the country-dweller.
In the grass there are the sheet webs of the humble money-spices or Linyphiids, minute creatures which make a canopy over a flat platform, well calculated to trap any small insect that crawls or flutters. In the hedgerows there are the orb-webs, mainly of the genera Araneus and Meta. In these the female sits centrally waiting for a twitch of the fabric which denotes a meal. If you breathe upon these creatures, they will respond with a violent rapid vibration which is calculated to confuse any would-be predator, or if really alarmed will drop like a stone into the hedge bottom, only to climb into position later along a thread which they used for their escape.
It has been calculated that in mature pasture there may be up to five million Linyphiids per hectare, accounting for an enormous weight of insects, mostly springtails and flies. And moving below them on the ground there are the wolf-spiders, not nearly so numerous, but still taking a large number of crawling insects. In regarding the spider occupants of our countryside, one finds human populations fading into insignificance by comparison.