MUSICAL SPIDERS. 229 
our garden-spiders less suspicion seems to exist. Nature softens hearts, 
and rugged industrialism itself grows smoother in rustic life. We see 
some upon our trees which behave tolerably well to their husbands, and 
do not too often remember that they are competitors in the chase. They 
permit them to reside in the same locality, although a little apart, and 
keeping them at a distance. A hght partition separates them. The 
princess consents that he may live under her roof, and on the ground- 
floor, while she lives on the first story,—keeping him below and in 
subjection, so that he may not presume to think himself the king, but 
only the prince consort, and the husband of the queen. 
Have they any sympathies beyond their own race? So some 
authorities have asserted, and I believe it. They are isolated from us 
far less than the true insects. They live in our houses, have an interest 
in knowing us, and seem to observe us. They pay great attention to 
voices and sounds, and have a marvellous perception of them. If they 
have not the insect-organs of hearing (which would seem to be the 
antennee), it is because they are all antenne. Their excessive vigilance, 
and the nervous irradiation which makes itself felt everywhere among 
them, endow them with the keenest receptivity. 
Much has been said about the musical spider of Pellisson. Another 
and less-known anecdote is not less striking. One of those lttle 
victims which are trained into virtuosi before they are ripe of age,— 
Berthome, illustrious in 1800,—owed his astonishing successes to the 
savage confinement in which he was forced to work. At eight he 
astounded and stupefied his hearers by his mastery of the violin. In 
his perpetual solitude he had a comrade whom no one suspected,—a 
spider. It was lodged at first in a quiet corner, but it gave itself 
license to advance from the corner to the music-stand, from the 
music-stand to the child, even climbing upon the mobile arm which 
held the bow. There, a palpitating and breathless amateur, it 
paused and listened. It was an audience in itself. The artist 
needed nothing more to fill him with inspiration and double his 
energy. 
