OCTOBER 243 



tudinous creatures, is the apparently needless amount of 

 slaughter and cruelty inseparable from their mode of 

 life. Why should such an abominable menage as that 

 described above have been planned, seeing that other 

 creeping things, leading far more exemplary lives, enjoy 

 quite as fair a prospect of perpetuating their species? 

 The further problem remains, seeing that spiders evince 

 signs of intelligence out of all proportion to their size and 

 position in life, why do the males not learn to avoid the 

 ghastly fate which has overtaken countless generations 

 of their hapless sex ? 



XXXIX 



Well, there is still justice under Heaven, and it has 

 overtaken the Lady of the Net. I left her 

 twelve months ago (1900), ensconced in her den, 

 with three round brown bundles of eggs behind her, and 

 the wasted skeletons of her thirteen husbands dangling 

 in the web under her eyes. Last summer she spun a 

 brand-new web, and began the old game. Five more 

 husbands, one after another, were tempted in, and, after 

 a brief love season, were devoured by this Messalina of 

 the Meshes. 



Then befell judgment. A younger and sprightlier 

 spider spun a web below the other, whereunto the males 

 resorted, to the neglect of the other house. The two 

 ladies met ; words passed (at least that may be assumed) ; 

 from words they went to worse; a fierce battle ensued; 

 Messalina i. was beaten and eaten up by her rival, who 

 may very well have been one of her own daughters. 



Such be some of the less admirable passages in nature. 



