PAINTING OF SPIDERS. 383 



spiders, such of them as are frequenters of the garden and the 

 field. The ungraceful forms of those among the same tribe 

 which are accustomed to abide in dark places are clothed in 

 skins of corresponding dulness ; but those which live and lurk 

 amongst leaves and flowers seem to have stolen of their lively 

 colours. Green, green and white, red and yellow, red and 

 white, or varied browns, in regular and tasteful markings, 

 adorn most commonly a variety of these spinners in the sun- 

 shine or the leafy shade. 



Amongst the less gay, but not least remarkably-painted of 

 this wily race, we cannot overpass that notable hunter, striped 

 (in black and white) like a zebra, and leaping like a tiger, 

 which is sure in the early sunshine of the year to be seen bask- 

 ing upon walls and window-ledges, ready to pounce upon the 

 first unlucky fly tempted to the same spot by the same enliven- 

 ing and unwonted warmth. 1 As one of the harbingers of 

 summer, we always look a welcome on this saltatory lover of 

 the sun, or perhaps only of the prey the sun procures him ; and, 

 for the same reason, we first espy with equal gladness his highly 

 distinguished or distinguishable little cousin, the scarlet Satin 

 Mite, 2 whose showy doublet loses nothing by contrast with the 

 ground he traverses. 



On the order Neuroptera, including dragon, scorpion, and 

 lacewing flies, the pencil of Nature has laid some of her most 

 brilliant colours, wanting only breadth to attract more general 

 attention. The linear trunks of dragon-flies are variegated, 

 according to their species, with yellow, blue, green, and red, 

 each accompanied more or less with black, and exhibit in the 

 peculiar clearness and sharpness of their mode of inlay the 

 appearance more of mosaic than of surface painting. 



But it is not either our province, or our purpose, or desire, 

 to wander far, even descriptively, from home ; and it is time 



1 See Vignette to " Spiders in their Analogies.' 

 a Tromlidium holosericum. 



