EIGHT-LEGGED FRIENDS. 115 



barbaric. She treated them for all the world as if they 

 were entirely devoid of a nervous system. I wouldn't 

 treat a Saturday Reviewer myself as that spider treated 

 the wasps when once she was sure of them. She went at 

 them with a sort of angry, half-contemptuous dash, kept 

 cautiously out of the way of the protruded sting, began 

 in most business-like fashion at the head, and rolling 

 the wasp round and round with her legs and feelers, 

 swathed him rapidly and effectually, with incredible 

 speed, in a donse network of web poured forth from her 

 spinnerets. In less than half a minute the astonished 

 wasp, accustomed rather to act on the offensive than the 

 defensive, found himself helplessly enclosed in a perfect 

 coil of tangled silk, which confined him from head to 

 sting without the possibility of movement in any direc- 

 tion. The whole time this had been going on the 

 victim, struggling and writhing, had been pushing out 

 its sting and doing the very best it knew to deal the wily 

 Eliza a poisoned death-blow. But Eliza, taught by 

 ancestral experience, kept carefully out of the way ; and 

 the wasp felt itself finally twirled round and round in 

 those powerful hands, and tied about as to its wings by a 

 thousand-fold cable. Sometimes, after the wasp was 

 secured, Eliza even took the trouble to saw off the wings 

 so as to prevent further struggling and consequent 

 damage to the precious web ; but more often she merely 

 proceeded to eat it alive without further formality, still 

 avoiding its sting as long as the creature had a kick left 

 in it, but otherwise entirely ignoring its character as a 

 sentient being in the most inhuman fashion. And all 

 the time, till the last drop of his blood was sucked out, 



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