JENNY SPINNERS. 



313 



sometimes also be named " Jenny Spinners," was, to us, no 

 less a mystery, till, on a summer's day, its possible solution 

 flashed upon us. We were sitting in a shady lane, when, on 

 the turf that bordered it, what should appear but a single 

 Mother Longlegs neither flying nor walking, but whirling 

 and spinning round in a strange eccentric manner ; her wings 

 and fore-legs beating in the air, her hind ones bent at their 

 angles so as to let the end of her pointed body, which was held 

 bolt upright, come in contact with the ground, Here, then, 

 was our " Jenny Spinner," not thus spinning for amusement 

 merely to make herself drunken with delight, but gravely 

 spinning mischief to the grass. With the united points of 

 her sharp shining forceps she was gimletting the turf, and in 

 every hole dropping one or more, perhaps, of her grain-like 

 eggs, germs minute of future long-legged spinners. 



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