PAINTING OF SPIDERS. 261 



which, are accustomed to abide in dark places, are clothed in 

 skins of corresponding dulness ; but those which live and 

 lurk amongst leaves and flowers seem to have stolen of their 

 lively colours. Green, green and white, red and yellow, red 

 and white, or varied browns, in regular and tasteful markings, 

 adorn most commonly a variety of these spinners in the sun- 

 shine or the leafy shade ; and when, as with our prying pro- 

 pensities is not uncommon, we intrude on the domestic privacy 

 of one of those broidered Arachnes keeping watch within a 

 rolled or folded leaf over her treasured eggs, wrapped in a 

 silken ball of white or blue or yellow, we have before us, in 

 our opinion (spider, and spider's nest and nursery though they 

 be), an assemblage of very pleasing objects, pretty in their 

 colouring, and in something more.* 



Amongst the less gay, but not least remarkably-painted of 

 this wily race, we cannot overpass that notable hunter, striped 

 (in black and white) like a zebra, and leaping like a tiger, 

 which is sure in the early sunshine of the year to be seen 

 basking upon walls and window-ledges, ready to pounce upon 

 the first unlucky fly temped to the same spot by the same en- 

 livening and unwonted warmth. f As one of the harbingers 

 of summer, we always look a welcome on this saltatory lover 

 of the sun, or perhaps only of the prey the sun procures him ; 

 and, for the same reason, we first espy with equal gladness his 



* See Vignette to " Instincts of Maternity." 

 t See Vignette to "Spiders in their Analogies." 



