CHAPTER XXIII. 



SPIDERS. 



Venomous Apparatus Spinnarets The Spider's Web Patience of the Spiders 

 Hunting Spiders Trapdoor Spiders Water Spiders The Haft Spider 

 Enemies of the Spiders Fecundity Maternal Affection The Stalita Tsenaria, 



INCAPABLE of muscular exertion, and of a texture so loose and 

 soft as to be torn to pieces or crushed by the slightest degree of 

 force, the spiders seem exposed to every attack ; and yet, help- 

 less and harmless a they appear to be, they are able to subdue 

 animals much larger than themselves ; for as a compensation 

 for their weakness, they are endowed with a most admirable in- 

 dustry, an exemplary patience, an indomitable perseverance, 

 and the power of secreting two liquids which fully answer all the 

 purposes of offence or defence which their mode of life requires. 

 One of these liquids is a poison which at once paralyses the 

 resistance of their prey, and acts with the same instantaneous 

 and fatal effect upon a fly or a beetle as prussic- a 

 acid on the human economy ; the other, a gluti- 

 nous fluid, which, concreting in the air, forms 

 those silken threads which their wonderful instinct 

 turns to so many valuable uses. 



The structure of the venomous apparatus of the 

 viper is justly admired, but that of the spider is a 

 no less beautiful piece of mechanism. It is by means 

 of the two mandibulse or forciples with which their 

 mouth is armed,that they inflict their deadly wound. 

 These mandibles are each armed with a moveable 

 and extremely sharp claw (a), near to the point of spider's n 

 which is a minute orifice (6), from which there es- fj&ajf* 

 capes a drop of poisonous liquid, that spreads itself over the 

 whole wound the instant that it is inflicted. This orifice, which 



