390 SPIDERS AND PLANTS. 



can perform the same feat, either to escape enemies or to pursue 

 game, the various winged insects which skim the face of the 

 same liquid mirror. 



The power of fasting for long intervals between their san- 

 guinary repasts, is another characteristic held by many of the 

 larger predatory animals in common with the spider. One of 

 the latter, kept by Vaillant for ten months under a sealed glass, 

 was found reduced only in size, and not, seemingly, in health 

 or activity. 



To the devouring and amphibious reptile and the rapacious 

 fish, the spider race no less offers its analogies in economy and 

 disposition. Breathing by means of gills, they are able to 

 dive, and walk under water, sometimes hunting on shore and 

 plunging with their prey to the bottom. In the Diving Spider, 1 

 from whose singular habitudes we have spun elsewhere an 

 imaginary tissue, 2 this faculty of respiration is further aided by 

 that of carrying down a supply of atmospheric air to her sub- 

 aqueous habitation. 



Lastly, the analogy between the fly-catching spider and the 

 fly- catching vegetable is by no means so remote as may appear. 

 It is an opinion generally received, that the latter, such as the 

 catch-fly, the Venus's fly-trap, and the pitcher-plant, appro- 

 priate to their own nourishment, if not the very juices of the 

 insects they entrap, the air at least evolved from them in the 

 process of putrefaction ; and, this admitted, the imprisoning 

 vegetable, and the imprisoning animal, the one subsisting 

 wholly, the other partially on the juices of their victims, must 

 be allowed to be tolerable representatives of each other. 



But we have dwelt, perhaps, over long on those exceedingly 

 ugly features of resemblance by which the spider is marked 

 out so clearly as a member of that cunning, ferocious, flesh- 

 eating family of which we constitute the head. Let us turn 

 now to the brighter side of the Aranea portraiture, for a 



1 Argyronefa aqimtica. 



2 See " Fresh-Water Svren ; " also " A New Gallery of Practical Science." 



