138 The Book of Bugs. 



bite as bad as they used to. It is true that in those days 

 the Italian violinists had to work overtime composing 

 tarantelles to play for the bitten, but still there were 

 sneering skeptics even then that said it was all a scheme 

 got up to pass the hat for the wife and family of the suf- 

 fering man, whom a malignant spider had bitten while 

 he was out looking for a job. Dufour had a tarantula 

 that was quite tame and gentle. She took flies from his 

 fingers like a dear thing. Almost any spider can be 

 taught to take food from forceps and water from a 

 camel's-hair brush. They are great water-drinkers, 

 spiders are. Til say that for 'em. Like the little tem- 

 perance bird we used to read about, ' Water, cold water, 

 is all of their song." Rum and tobacco they turn from 

 with loathing. 



I used to think these grandaddy long-legs were 

 spiders; old men, some call them, or harvesters. They 

 are very useful when you want to know the way home. 

 Catch one and I forget whether you pull one of his 

 legs off or not; I seem to remember that we pulled one 

 off and then hold him down by one leg while you ask 

 him quite sharply which is the way home. He will wave 

 a foreleg in the proper direction. It is wonderful the in- 

 telligence displayed by the lower orders of creation. But 

 the grandaddy long-legs is not a spider. Neither is he a 

 scorpion. 'But he is somewhere in that neighborhood. 



All spiders spin, but not all of them spin snares, those 

 orbed and radiated webs that we see pictured so many 

 times and every time pictured wrong. But that only 

 goes to show that the lower animals are not the only 

 ones that possess instinct. I think it will be generally 

 agreed that artists may be classed among the higher ani- 

 mals. At any rate, their instinct is to draw a thing not 

 as it is, but as it appears to a man that doesn't know very 



