278 SPIDERS AND MEN. 



does the domestic spinner sit grimly on her cunning watch 

 for the least vibration in her lines, those single threads so art- 

 fully extended above the main web for a triple purpose to 

 arrest the flight of her victims, by its tremblings to announce 

 their capture, and as a cable bridge to enable her to reach and 

 seize her prey. u In this corner," says an old quaint transla- 

 tor of Pliny, the Eoman naturalist, " with what subtiltie doth 

 she retire, making semblance as though she meant nothing 

 less than she doth ; and as if she went about some other busi- 

 ness."* With the human lurker for blood, "in secret places 

 doth she thus murder the innocent, catching the poor " (flies, 

 chiefly the starveling and the weak), "when she draweth 

 them into her net." 



Besides thug with crafty wiliness seeming to plan and cer- 

 tainly compassing the destruction of others, the spider, by 

 apparent stratagem, often assumes the appearance of death as 

 a means for the preservation of her own life. Who has not 

 often noticed how that, on alarm or pressing emergency, she 

 will sometimes, instead of taking at once to her hairy shanks, 

 only fold them up under her, and, dropping from her station, 

 remain without motion, even, (according to experimental natu- 

 ralists) to the piercing and tearing asunder of her soft bloated 

 body ? Herein the spider, in outward act, offers a parallel to 

 the man who throws himself flat upon the ground and holds 

 his breath, to defraud the appetite for living flesh of Master 



* Holland's ' Plinie.' 



