48 APPENDIX. 



which emanates from her body, bul to make it brighter in propor- 

 tion to the force of her inclinations ! If entomologists tell the truth 

 and there be no mistake, Hymen might light his torch at a glow- 

 worm's tail. 



ELATEBS. 



The Elater forms a subdivision of the Buprestidae, a name by 

 which the ancients designated the vesicating flies. Naturalists are 

 wont to give, in a proof of the instinct of self-preservation in the-e 

 insects, which are very agreeable to the eye, that they draw in their 

 legs and fall as if dead at your approach I If the expedient is so 

 capital, why docs no other insect hit upon the same? But if design 

 guided this insect, he would not always fall, as when a palpable trap 

 was laid for him to fall into. The fact is that that 'Che action is not 

 understood, and a false interpretation is worse than none. 



SPIDERS. 



It is said that certain male spiders approach their females, who 

 greatly exceed them in size, and whose anger they dread, (minime- 

 que libidine peccant,] with manifest timidity. A. rope ladder (such rope 

 as spiders make) conducts the gallant to the bower of bliss, and when 

 the interview is over, he knows he must not loiter. But, expeditious 

 as he is, he gels now and then caught in the act of retiring, aud is 

 torn to pieces by his unnatural male! Put Ihe maternal impulse is 

 more exemplary than the conjugal in this ill-conditioned menage I It is 

 a singular spectacle to see the mother engaged in the work of liberat- 

 ing her progeny from their shells; when this extrication is accom- 

 plished, they mount upon her back, and are carried about by her for 

 sundry days, during which she entertains them with such insects, as 

 may suit the delicate appetites of spiders still in the nursery. So 

 thickly does she allow these unfledged spiderlings to occupy her back, 

 that she consents to be made hideous and bloated to look upon, for the 

 sake of her progeny, like other slatterns in the biped conditions of life. 

 Before she has a family, she is represented as timid, but once become 

 a mother, she is a very lioness! Knock off the brood from her hack, 

 and she stoops to pick them up agaiu, and would rather perish lhau 



