278 SPIDERS AND MEN. 



does the domestic spinner sit grimly on her cunning watch for 

 the least vibration in her lines, those single threads so artfully 

 extended above the main web for a triple purpose to arrest 

 the flight of her victims, by its tremblings to announce their 

 capture, and as a cable bridge to enable her to reach and seize 

 her prey. " In this corner," says an old quaint translator of 

 Pliny, the Roman naturalist, " with what subtiltie doth she 

 retire, making semblance as though she meant nothing less 

 than she doth, and as if she went about some other business/'* 

 \\ ith the human lurker for blood, "in secret places doth she 

 thus murder the innocent, catching the poor '' (flies, chiefly 

 the starveling and the weak), " when she draweth them into 

 her net." 



Besides thus with crafty wiliness seeming to plan and cer- 

 tainly compassing the destruction of others, the spider, by 

 apparent stratagem, often assumes the appearance of death as 

 a means for the preservation of her own life. AVho has not 

 often noticed how that, on alarm or pressing emergency, she 

 will sometimes, instead of taking at once to her hairy shanks, 

 only fold them up under her, and, dropping from her station, 

 remain without motion, even (according to experimental natu- 

 ralists) to the piercing and tearing asunder of her soft bloated 

 body ? Herein the spider, in outward act, offers a parallel to 

 the man who throws himself flat upon the ground and holds 

 his breath, to defraud the appetite for living flesh of Master 



* Holland's ' Plinie.' 



