48 FLASHLIGHTS ox NATURE 



biography, I do not desire to hold her up to 

 the young, the gay, the giddy, and the thought- 

 Ir^s as a pattern for imitation. She does not 

 point a moral with the ant. On the contrary, 

 she must rank with Semiramis and the famous 

 queen who dwelt in the Tour de Nesle as a 

 shining example of abandoned and shameless 

 wickedness. 



Spiders are not all alike. They are of many 

 kinds, and of various families. So I shall begin 

 by remarking that Rosalind, the particular lady 

 whose portrait I have here presented to you in 

 words, and whose life-history my colleague, Mr. 

 Knock, has drawn for you from nature, belongs 

 to the most familiar race of her kind, the true 

 garden spider, which constructs the best-known 

 and most perfect examples of regular geometrical 

 webs. We called her Rosalind because she was 

 a maiden of hunting proclivities, who lived under 

 the greenwood in our own particular Forest of 

 Arden. But her ways were not lovable. She 

 killed flies in a fashion that would have brought 

 up fresh tears in the eyes of Jacques ; and she 

 devoured her Orlando with all the callous ferocity 

 of a South Sea Islander. 



I will begin at the beginning with my eight- 

 legged friend's biography. Rosalind was hatched 

 in spring from a cosy cocoon or ball of eggs 

 deposited by her affectionate, but otherwise cruel, 

 mamma in the preceding October. She was one 

 of a large family say, seven or eight hun- 

 dred. The cocoon was composed of yellowish 



