146 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



serve for just as long as a hen's eggshell. In three weeks 

 the silkworm, as ugly as useful, has become the perfect 

 moth. The specialised apparatus, differing in a hundred 

 species, for opening the case is brought to work and the 

 moth emerges. At once the sexes find one another, in a 

 day or two the eggs are laid ; and the parents as a rule die 

 with little delay. Sometimes their dead bodies serve, as 

 Caesar's, to 'stop a hole to keep the draughts away.' The 

 common bark moth often, but not always, dies in the mouth 

 of the tunnel along which her eggs are laid. In almost all 

 cases the male dies at once. M. Maeterlinck has made 

 common property the fact of the death of the bee selected by 

 the queen. He dies by force of his own energy. In very 

 many scorpions the female at once kills and often eats the 

 male; and the house-spider is as ruthless. Sir Herbert 

 Maxwell horrified quite a large public by describing in great 

 detail the tragic fate of a series of husbands of a certain vast 

 house-spider. Her venomous hate of the male, whether or 

 no the accepted suitor, has been a theme for years. It is the 

 very final example of the law of nature by which everything 

 is sacrificed to the continuance of the species. The male 

 dies the moment his end is accomplished. The marvel is 

 that the fear of the tragedy, which quite obviously has a 

 place in the imagination of the male spider, does not deter. 

 However, he has at least the chance of escape, while 

 the scorpion, it seems, does not as a rule even make the 

 attempt. The scorpions are, of course, allied to the spiders, 

 and it is in this savage race that the destruction of husbands 

 prevails. The spider needs vast amounts of food for the 

 production of silk and nothing is rejected. They eat their 

 own cast shells, and it is but a small advance in cannibalism 

 to eat their own species. 



The spiders and moths have no racial affinity, but, greatly 



