38 HALF-AN-HOUE, 



difference. But '■''Ex pede Herciilefn!''^ which we may paraphrase, 

 " By their feet ye may know them." There is a Dipterous kind 

 of foot, a Neuropterous type, a Lepidopterous type, a Hymenop- 

 terous type, a Coleopterous type, and so on, which he who runs 

 may read, after going to school long enough, and being sufficiently 

 diligent therein. And all this opens out new and ever-increasing 

 sources of mental enjoyment and enlightenment. 



The Zebra Hunting-Spider— Salticus scenicus, $. — What a 

 treat it was to us, as boys, to watch these fellows on the steps 

 leading up to our father's warehouse, in dingy, smoky, sooty Leeds ! 

 So clean, and nice, and pure they looked, so agile and graceful in 

 their movements, and panther-hke in their spring ! Little did I 

 then dream that I should ever come to live near White's Selborne, 

 to love the things he loved, to watch the things he watched, to 

 examine the things he examined, only with the microscope in 

 addition, to open wide the portals of knowledge, which to him, 

 without that aid, were but as a sealed book ! To claim as a 

 friend the present proprietor of what was then the quiet vicarage ; 

 to see the letters which he wrote ; to handle the stick wherewith 

 he walked, and on which he leaned at times to muse and contem- 

 plate the lovely scenes before him. Great indeed is the power of 

 genius ! Well may his editor say, " When a beam of hght shines 

 forth in darkness, it throws its brightest rays on the objects nearest 

 to it, while objects at a distance are scarcely illuminated at all. 

 But the light of genius is of a different character, for it often 

 happens that he whose brilliant intellect throws light on the dark- 

 ened minds of men over the whole surface of the earth is unknown 

 to those immediately surrounding him, and is even rendered the 

 subject of contemptuous pity by those whose mental vision is no 

 more capable of receiving the light of his intellect than their cor- 

 poreal vision of enduring the glory of the meridian sun." 



So it was with White. He was widely known as a philosopher 

 in the highest sense of the word, but he was so known only to the 

 world without. His own village could not understand him, and 

 little did its inhabitants suppose that that insignificant little Sel- 

 borne should become a world-known name by means of him, 

 whose peaceful life was spent in retirement, and whose only eulogy 

 from a surviving fellow-parishioner was, " That he was a still, 

 quiet body, and there wasn't a bit of harm in him ; there wasn't, 

 indeed." (Routledge's edition, 1854, ed. T. G. Wood). 



The falces are so different in the male from the female. In 

 the former the palpi are longer and larger, and it would seem that 

 to enable it to take its prey a corresponding lengthening and 

 strengthening of the prehensile portion of the mouth-organs was 

 necessary. 'I'he palpal organs, being small and simple in Salticus^ 



