SAE alte oe Lal 
GoGo tor Obfervations on the. Garden Spider: ; 
fly, they are feen to run out that moment;,,and never retire 
back until they haye affured themfelyes, by feeling, that 
they have been deceived. . An animal endowed with fight 
would not commitfach errors. Befides, the curious hiftory of 
their amours; the different maneeuvres they prattife before 
they touch cach other; their fear and miftruft when they 
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_firft approach, and their precipitate flight, all announce that 
they are yery,umecertain, in regard to the objet prefented to: 
them: it is only by means of feeling that they are able t to 
difcover that they have not to do with an enemy. //()1 LJ 
My doubt on this head is not confined merely to fpiders, 
but extends to al! white-blooded animals, the eruftaceous 
excepted, It is probable that the antennz and other tenta-~ 
eula perform, in infects and worms, the office of the organs 
" 
of fight. Thatmultitude of eyes afligned to flies, butterflies, &e- 
} 
“ture, which never forms any thing fuperfluons. But what 
fame fenfé, efpecially in: beings which, by the frortnefs of 
“their life, are the leaft expofed to the lofs of thefe organs ; 
*"neceffary for thé prefervation: of’a {pecies | of living beings,” 
Ni always. places. this mean//in._-their own: power. She- 
‘moftt effential means of exiftence.. Had fhe made the fabri- 
‘of perifhing. «It was neceflary, therefore, that) the, fhould ; 
‘Be ‘actually the cafe. But’ we niuft generalife, this confe- 
in my opinion, is by no means agreeable to the progrefs of na- 
could be more ‘ufelefs than that,profufion of organs of the 
while the ‘largeft animals, deftined to exift|fer a century, 
have-received only a double organ of fight, which 1s fo ne- 
ceffary to them? This would be an abfurdity which we, can~ 
not fuppofe to exif. 
I fhall here add, in’ regard to the garden fpider,, that as 
Nature is infinitely wife, fhe could not intruft to chance their 
eation of their web to depend on a breath of wind, that may 
not take place; fhe would have expofed.them to. the danger 
put under their difpofitien direct means 5, and, this feems te~ 
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quence, and concliide, that whea any mean.1s andifpenfibly © 
whas rendered. it prechrious df no time ; and it never depends” | 
upon 
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