THE SPIDER. 163 



brings them down as they pass unsuspectingly overhead. 

 Man uses craft, and skill, and cunning to capture his prey 

 of all sorts, and exults in his success. He would laugh to 

 scorn the accusation that he was a lurking assassin, and yet 

 he assumes a tone of lofty moral superiority towards the 

 spider, who uses the gifts nature has bestowed upon him not 

 for sport or amusement, but for existence. No spider is 

 recorded as having employed a large body of his friends 

 to drive up two or three thousand half-tamed flies to be 

 slaughtered by him as a form of amusement. We have no 

 doubt that such spiders as may be engaged about their 

 business, within view of slaughter so perpetrated by human 

 beings, must quiver in their webs with righteous indignation. 

 Let us, then, have no more maudlin sentimentality about 

 the cruelty of the spider. It obtains its food by the chase, 

 and in so doing exhibits a skill, a dexterity, and a patience 

 unsurpassed by any living creature. 



The spider has a wonderful power of adaptability to 

 circumstances. The great fat-bodied spider of our gardens 

 is necessarily slow-moving, and therefore builds its web 

 and waits. There are others less burdened by nature who 

 are fierce and active, who hunt their prey on a sunny wall 

 as a dog might hunt a rabbit, quartering the ground with 

 restless activity, and pouncing upon the prey with the 

 spring of a tiger. Some for preference build thick webs in 

 dark corners, festooning cornices with filmy drapery, to the 

 annoyance of good housewives. Others, tiny creatures 

 these, will throw out a few threads, and, floating upon them, 

 allow themselves to be wafted vast distances through the 

 air. There is the water spider, who, long before man 

 invented the diving bell, dwelt below the water, building its 



