SPIDERS AND MEN. 387 



self (we might even say, from the infernal spirit) through the 

 descending grades of quadruped, bird, reptile, animal, flower, 

 even to the vegetable of fly-catching construction. Hidden from 

 view behind the gauzy screen afforded by her horizontal net, 

 how does the domestic spinner sit grimly on her cunning watch 

 for the least vibration in her lines, those single threads so art- 

 fully extended above the main web for a triple purpose to 

 arrest the flight of her victims, by its tremblings to announce 

 their capture, and as a cable-bridge to enable her to reach and 

 seize her prey. 



Besides thus with crafty wiliness seeming to plan and cer- 

 tainly compassing the destruction of others, the spider, by 

 apparent stratagem, often assumes the appearance of death as 

 a means for the preservation of her own life. Who has not 

 often noticed how that, on alarm or pressing emergency, she 

 will sometimes, instead of taking at once to her hairy shanks, 

 only fold them up under her, and, dropping from her station, 

 remain without motion, even (according to experimental natu- 

 ralists) to the piercing and tearing asunder of her soft bloated 

 body? 



Again, it has been said and sung, that even the wild beasts 

 spare their kind, the destroyer Man alone turning " his fierce 

 pursuit on man." This is not true, the assertion being contra- 

 dicted by several carnivorous creatures, both of land and water; 

 but the spider follows pre-eminently in the path of the principal 

 and earliest fratricide, by the habit of killing, and, in cannibal- 

 fashion, devouring its comrades, even of the same family. 

 Reaumur attempted to establish a factory of the large garden 

 spiders, for the sake of their strong and beautiful silk ; but the 

 factious weavers overturned his " projet" by turning their fangs 

 upon each other. If it were an agreeable object of discovery, 

 we might seek and find yet a few more corresponding points of 

 character betwixt ourselves and the " villain spider ;" and what 

 is singular, such resembling features are the most apparent 

 in those species of the race which are greatest frequenters of 



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