292 THE SPIDER'S SIGHT. 



dusting it, then smoothing down her person, and combing her 

 hairy legs, till no unseemly particle is left to disfigure her 

 attire or abode. In ' Insect Architecture ' is given an amus- 

 ing description of the laborious industry of a spider passenger 

 on board a steamer, in clearing her geometric web of flakes of 

 soot adhering to it from the smoke of the engine, and ren- 

 dering it unfit for use. Whenever practicable, she stripped 

 from her lines each sooty particle, and when clogged past 

 clearance, detached, bundled them up, threw them away, and 

 supplied their place by new-spun threads. 



To suppose for a moment that a creature so watchful, so 

 ingenious, so accurate, so tidy, as the one we have been con- 

 sidering, should be blind, seems one of the most curious of 

 speculative notions, yet has it really been conjectured that the 

 web-making artificers of the spider race perform all their 

 operations of surpassing nicety, through the nicety, as sur- 

 passing, of their touch and hearing. Those who have thus 

 imagined spiders to be destitute of sight, would seem to have 

 so conjectured contrary to the evidence of their own ; seeing, 

 as is plainly to be seen, that a number of sparkling gem-like 

 points, if not eyes, exactly resembling in appearance the ocelli 

 of other insects, stud the head or fore part of our spinning 

 Arachnes. These are most often eight, sometimes six in num- 

 ber, varied in colour from black to the clear transparent hue 

 of a sapphire, and are placed in different situations admirably 

 adapted to the habits of each tribe. This provision of Nature 



