102 DISMEMBERMENT AND DEATH. 



with its cunning artificer suspended, head downwards, in the 

 centre, or else beside it, half hidden by a leaf, so as to watch, 

 unseen, its eagerly desired victims. And see ! a single crane- 

 fly, a deserter from the stilted phalanx on the grass, rises, 

 sweeping towards the hedge, and (silly or short-sighted little 

 animal !) unconscious of the warning tokens heads, wings, 

 legs, of murdered or mutilated comrades which bedeck the net 

 of the spider touches the circles of the fatal maze. It trem- 

 bles to its centre, and from her leafy ambush out rushes the 

 grim destroyer. 



Hapless Father Longlegs ! not by the leg art thou this time 

 entangled, for then, with a leg minus, thou mightest have pro- 

 ceeded on thy flight ; but by the wing thou art fast holden, 

 and, struggle as thou mayest, before thy regardless fellows 

 have finished their sunset gambols, thou wilt be reduced to 

 nothing but a headless, wingless, legless trunk, occupying, in 

 the grasp of thy sleek, fat-bodied murderess, the centre of her 

 'terrible' 'snatfej c 



Sphere is an'^n^ ( bf Father Longlegs; but he lives always 

 in others of his race, about whom there is still something to 

 be observed worth noting, albeit not quite so noticeable as 

 their giraffean supporters. 



If any of our friends will take the trouble to look narrowly 

 at the next Longlegs, rested conveniently for inspection on 

 wall or window, they will perceive (what perhaps they never 

 saw before) two curious little appendages, like drumsticks, 



