5 20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lin doorway, which was moistened for their delectation with sugar and 

 water. 



The time for my summer holidays arrived, and I started for the 

 south, leaving Esau to look after the house. 



The friendship I had struck up with spiders certainly increased 

 the pleasure of my trip. I found my friends in numbers everywhere 

 I went. They were on the shady side of dock-leaves. They floated 

 in the air and settled on my hat, and were carried off by the next 

 breath of breeze. I found their webs in profusion between the 

 branches of a monkey-tree in the garden ; and in the corn-fields 

 myriads of these small creatures trapped flies that were almost micro- 

 scopic. On the sandy slopes of the sea-shore, cobwebs were among 

 the gorse-bushes. The diadem spiders in the rose-trees vied with 

 each other in the regularity of their nets, and every barn was rich in 

 arachnean architecture. I had heard of water-spiders, and I hunted 

 for them assiduously in every pool and stream in the neighborhood, 

 but with no success. I found no water-spiders, but I became the pos- 

 sessor of many inhabitants of the ponds. 



Three weeks passed too quickly, and I had to return to my work 

 and to Esau. Alas ! what a lamentable sight met my eyes ! Esau 

 was dead, and her children were certainly fatter than when I left. I 

 could arrive at but one conclusion. The dauntless adventuress who 

 had gloried in murder and fratricide had become the victim of mis- 

 placed love. Those little wretches whom she had brought into the 

 world, and cared for and nurtured, had turned uj)on her and slain 

 her and sucked her life-blood. Ah, poor mother, thy antecedents 

 might not have been good ! Possibly thou mightest have dined off 

 thy husband or thy paramour certainly thou hast waged unnatural 

 though valiant war against thy kind ; still, that was no reason why 

 thou shouldst have been sacrificed by thy offspring in the bloom of 

 thy maturity. Gentleman's Magazine. 



-+++- 



SUDDEN WHITENING OF THE HAIR. 



WITH so many professors of the art of rejuvenation proclaiming 

 their readiness to turn old faces into new ones, smooth out 

 wrinkles, obliterate crow's-feet, and restore the hair to its original 

 abundance and color, the putting of young heads upon old shoulders 

 should be easy enough ; but the proverbial impossibility of putting 

 old heads upon young shoulders still seems to hold, although the feat 

 has sometimes been accomplished by Nature herself. Sorrow, not 

 Time, frosted the bright tresses of Mary Stuart and Marie- Antoinette ; 

 and theirs were not the only queenly heads that have been prematurely 



