SPIDERS 67 
a nutshell, and in the cavity of this structure, called by 
Aristotle '' seno orbiculato," there could be seen through 
the web-work round white eggs not larger than millet 
grains. From these eggs there hatched out on the last 
day of August a like number of tiny white spiders, which, 
immediately after birth, began to emit filaments. During 
the following two days all the eggs hatched, fifty in num- 
ber, and in order to see how long the young spiders could 
live without food, I did not put anything eatable in the 
jar; hence, on the eighth of September, some of them 
died, and in the first week of October nearly all were 
dead, except three, which remained alive together with 
the mother, which in turn died on the thirtieth of De- 
cember. The young ones, having noticeably increased 
in size, lived until the eighth of February. If you asked 
me why these three grew and became larger I should 
probably find a reason in their having obtained nourish- 
ment from the bodies of their dead brothers and mother 
by slightly sucking them; or if this were not so, the ex- 
pansion of their bodies might make them appear to have 
really grown. However, I hold to the first opinion more 
than to the second, and it does not trouble me that peo- 
ple believe, and writers assert, that no animal will eat 
individuals of its own species, since I have found by 
many experiments that no fable was ever more fabulous 
than this one, and no one ever heard a more lying false- 
hood. I remember having forced a lion to eat the flesh 
of a lioness, nor did he do it from starvation, for on the 
same day he had eaten many pounds of mutton. The 
most ordinary hunter knows by experience that a dead 
boar left in the woods will be devoured by the live ones. 
Bears eat bear-meat and tigers, tiger-flesh, and I can 
assure you of a fact in proof of this. Meemet Bey, 
