SPIDERS AND MITES. 203 



CHAPTER 



SPIDERS AND MITES. 



SPIDERS, I am sure, are not favourites with you. With 

 the exception of the poor prisoner in the Bastille, who had 

 succeeded in taming a Spider, the only creature besides 

 himself that inhabited his dungeon, I do not think I 

 have ever heard of any one who loved or admired Spiders 

 morally. Yet, physically, we may find much to admire in 

 them, as not a few naturalists have done before us ; there 

 are men who have devoted their lives to the study of this 

 unamiable race ; and who have discovered in them the 

 same wondrous skill, and the same perfect adaptation of 

 organ to function, of structure to habit, that mark all 

 God's works, whether we think them pretty or ugly, 

 amiable or repulsive. 



I am going to show you some of these pieces of mechan- 

 ism. Remember that the whole tribe is sent into the 

 world to perform one business : they are commissioned 

 to keep down what would otherwise be a " plague of flies." 

 They are fly-butchers by profession ; and, just as our beef- 

 and mutton-butchers have their slaughter-house, their 

 steel, their knives, their pole-axe, their hooks, so are 

 these little slaughterers furnished with nets and traps, 

 with caves, with fangs, and hooks, and poison-bags, ready 

 for their constant work. They have, in fact, nothing else 

 to do : their whole lives are spent in slaughtering, with 

 the exception of rearing fresh generations of slaughterers, 

 and I suppose they think, and are intended to think, of 

 nothing else. 



