86 THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER. 



which has long lived in the bookcase, and smitten with 

 leprosy the fresh dark binding of many a good book. I 

 confess that the way in which many people treat spiders 

 makes me melancholy. Ladies especially crush them with 

 slippers, or else, if a pretty timidity is one of their accom- 

 plishments, they invoke the " boy " to " take away that 

 fanw'ir." lie picks it up with the points of his five fingers, 

 as he would a bolus of rice and curry, and throws it out of 

 the window, a miserable agglomeration of mangled limbs. 

 Two reasons are given for this : first, that spiders are ugly ; 

 second, that they bite. Now, I am not going to put for- 

 ward the plea that spiders are good-looking, though that 

 depends entirely upon your point of view ; but I protest 

 against the argument in the abstract that plain looks are a 

 sufficient reason for putting anybody to death. And as for 

 the second reason, spiders have plenty of jaws and pre- 

 sumably can bite ; but I have for years been searching for 

 authentic instances of persons having been bitten by them, 

 and up to date I have succeeded in collecting one of doubt- 

 ful value. It was a case of a boy, who thrust his imperti- 

 nent finger into a hole where there was a spider, and be- 

 lieved it bit him. I would have bitten under the same 

 circumstances. The fact is, that people who crush spiders 



