100 THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS LESSONS. 



Then, again, spiders breathe in a manner more re- 

 sembling higher animals than insects, intricate and 

 singularly characteristic of creative wisdom as they are. 

 Though a few of them breathe by tracheae, the majority 

 do so by pulmonary sacs. 



Now, after this long preamble, let us take a peep 

 down our magic tube, and see 

 what there is to be seen with 

 our own eyes. 



"Eyes" Look here! How 

 they stare at you ! How I pity 

 a poor fly directly the spider 

 " eyes " it ! Each o these eyes 



Head of a spider. look for a11 the world like 



the bull's-eye lens of a police- 

 man's lantern, with the dazzling light glaring through 

 the glass covering. 



That good man, and able naturalist, whom we have 

 recently lost, Philip Gosse, thus describes the mechanism 

 and occupation of spiders : " The whole tribe," he says, 

 "is sent into the world to perform one business they 

 are commissioned to keep down what would otherwise be 

 a ' plague of flies/ They are fly-butchers by profession ; 

 and just as our beef and mutton butchers have their 

 slaughter-house, their steel, their knives, their pole-axe, 

 their hooks, so are these little slaughterers furnished 

 with nets and traps, with caves, with fangs and hooks 

 and poison-bags, ready for their constant work." 



Our specimen is taken from the great garden spider. 

 Its eight eyes are placed on the top of its head in such a 

 position that, as the Irishman's gun was so fashioned that 

 it would " shoot round the corner," so they can see in every 

 direction. The four middle ones form nearly a square, 

 and the two on each side have the power of survey which 



