Garden Spiders: Question of Property 



furious attack is made forthwith. Victory, 

 after hanging for a moment in the balance, 

 is once again decided in the stranger's fa- 

 vour. The vanquished party, this time a 

 sister, is eaten without the slightest scruple. 

 Her web becomes the property of the 

 victor. 



There it is, in all its horror, the right of 

 might: to eat one's like and take away their 

 goods. Man did the same in days of old : he 

 stripped and ate his fellows. We continue to 

 rob one another, both as nations and as indi- 

 viduals; but we no longer eat one another: 

 the custom has grown obsolete since we dis- 

 covered an acceptable substitute in the mutton- 

 chop. 



Let us not, however, blacken the Spider 

 beyond her deserts. She does not live by war- 

 ring on her kith and kin ; she does not of her 

 own accord attempt the conquest of another's 

 property. It needs extraordinary circum- 

 stances to rouse her to these villainies. I take 

 her from her web and place her on another's. 

 From that moment, she knows no distinction 

 between meum and tuum: the thing which 

 the leg touches at once becomes real estate. 

 And the intruder, if she be the stronger, ends 

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