LIFE AMONGST THE SPIDERS. 121 



show their wisdom more than in the building of their 

 egg-bags, the material of which, though made from the 

 same animal matter as the web, in the same loom, and 

 with the same apparatus, is of a totally different descrip- 

 tion, the latter resembling cotton and the former silk. 

 The egg-bag of the spider, which, as we have already seen 

 in the case of some garden spiders, may contain so many 

 as 170 eggs is a very clever contrivance, being made 

 entirely of silk, and carefully concealed in some out-of- 

 the-way corner in the garden. She knows perhaps that 

 these children of hers will never be seen by their parent, 

 and yet she has been taught to love herself last, so that 

 they who will survive her may have sufficient food to last 

 them till they are old enough to find it for themselves. 

 Among all the quaint epitaphs which may be read upon 

 some of our older tombstones, I know of none more so 

 than one erected to the mother of twenty-one children, 

 which runs thus : 



u Some have children, some have none, 

 Here lies the mother of twenty -one." 



Did the mother of that thrice-perfect number display 

 the same maternal love that this spider would have done, 

 whom you might have roasted alive, firmly clutching in 

 its hands its baby-bag, choosing rather to perish than 

 leave go its hold ? 



One lesson to be got in the study of spiders is to 

 avoid their quarrelsome disposition. It was thought at 

 oue time that spiders' silk, if its production could be 

 cultivated, might enter into competition with silkworms', 

 and for this purpose breeding spiders upon a large scale 

 i^as attempted; but in vain. The bad tempers of the 

 family bred nothing but quarrels, which ended, as some- 

 times they have ended in the quarrels of another family 



