EIGHT-LEGGED FRIENDS. 109 



with Nature herself (if we may venture to personify that 

 impersonal entity) ; and that she has provided such a 

 constant supply or relay of spiders as will amply suffice 

 to fill up all the possible vacancies that can ever occur in 

 insect-eating circles? Unless you have considered all 

 these points carefully, and have an answ r er to give about 

 them, you are not in a position to pronounce upon the 

 subject, and you had better be referred for six months 

 longer, as the medical examiners gracefully put it, to your 

 ethical, psychological, and biological studies. 



The great point about the position in which Eliza 

 and Lucy had placed themselves was simply this. 

 They stood full against the light, so that we could 

 see right through their translucent bodies, which were 

 almost liquid to look upon, and beautifully dappled 

 with dark spots on a grey ground in a very pretty 

 and effective pattern. So favourable was the oppor- 

 tunity for observation, indeed, that we could clearly 

 make out with the naked eye even the joints of their legs, 

 the hairs on their tarsi excuse the phrase and the very 

 shape of their cruel tigerlike claws, as they rushed forth 

 upon their prey in a sort of carnivorous frenzy. At all 

 hours of the day we could notice exactly what they were 

 doing or suffering ; and so familiar did we become with 

 them individually and personally, that before the end of 

 the season we recognized in detail all the differences of 

 their characters almost as one might do with cats or dogs, 

 and spoke of them by their Christian names like old and 

 well-known acquaintances. 



As the webs which Lucy and Eliza spun were several 

 times broken or mutilated during the year, either by 



