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whenever he was attacking his prey. He is roally one of the most formidable 

 creatures on earth when we understand the forefront of his body. It is a mass of 

 offensive and defensive weapons. He has mandibles of fearful strength for his 

 size. They are very large and very deadly weapons, as we explain elsewhere, and, 

 supposing that his eyes were close to the mandibles, they would be sadly in the 

 way. God Almighty has made a different place for them. They are some little 

 distance down the back, and so well placed that there is little fear of their being 

 injured. The first eyes I ever saw were unusually interesting to me, because four 

 out of the eight were perfectly flat, whereas the other four were to be seen from 

 the side view, looking down, as it were, upon the pupils which stood out, well 

 dilated. The specimen was from a skeleton. Besides, the spider has more than 

 two eyes as a rule. Some have two. I believe no spider— no true spider — has 

 four, unless you call the harvest man a spider. Many spiders have six, but the 

 most extensive are the eight-eyed. And these eyes are in all sorts of places as to 

 their relative positions on the different animals. Those that are six-eyed may 

 have six, equal and oval ; there may be a pair on each side and a pair in the 

 middle ; there may be three pairs formed of two each, close together, or they may 

 be isolated. Then in the eight-eyed there may be four large and four small— or 

 two large and six small ; or in three rows— two large, two small, four equal, or 

 four slightly larger than the rest, or all eight nearly equal, or two larger than the 

 rest. There may be six equal, two oblong, or nearly all equal in two rows. You 

 may have them with two end eyes on each side on tubercles— in a transverse 

 curved row, or in two nearly straight parallel rows. The side eyes may be on 

 tubercles or all of them on a prominence. You may find them nearly all on lilack 

 spots. These distinctions are regular in the spiders ; so much so that Mr. 

 Blackwall distinguishes the different families of spiders solely from their eyes. 

 He looks at the position and number of eyes on a spider, and then classifies it 

 accordingly. He has done so with our British spiders. But how many spiders 

 have we in Great Britain ? We recognise a few, but as for there being many 

 different sorts in and near England, those who have not investigated them would 

 say there were very few. Well, already there are between 500 and GOO species, 

 classified, arranged, and named distinctly one from another. There are, indeed, 

 good reasons for those who have not examined much into the minute forms to be 

 surprised that life in such varied ways is in our very midst and yet we know it 

 not The most giant mind that ever was given to us ordinary mortals, cannot 

 grasp, except in the very faintest way, the wonders that exist in this world. 



But before we leave the eyes of spiders we may observe that their sense of 

 sight cannot be very exquisite. They do not seem able to accommodate them- 

 selves much for vision. You may easily delude a spider and make him believe he 

 has a fly to be captured, when in reality you are deceiving him by something of 

 the size of a fly. He does not detect the deception by sight. But then another 

 sense comes into operation, namely, touch. His web is very sensitive to motion, 

 and he can feel the least movement whilst hiding in his home. This firmness of 

 touch is more useful to him than sight. There is a spider living in the southern 

 part of Europe which is very interesting as to its eyes. It is the Tarantula 



