SPIDERS AND MITES 233 



CHAPTER XIII 



SPIDERS AND MITES 



SPIDERS, I am sure, are not favorites with you. With 

 the exception of the poor prisoner in the Bastile, 

 who had succeeded in taming a Spider the only 

 creature besides himself that inhabited his dungeon I do 

 not think I have ever heard of any one who loved or 

 admired Spiders, morally. Yet, physically, we may find 

 much to admire in them, as not a few naturalists have 

 done before us; there are men who have devoted their 

 lives to the study of this unamiable race, and who have 

 discovered in them the same wondrous skill, and the same 

 perfect adaptation of organ to function, of structure to 

 habit, that mark all God's works, whether we think them 

 pretty or ugly, amiable or repulsive. 



I am going to show you some of these pieces of mech- 

 anism. Remember that the whole tribe is sent into the 

 world to perform one business they are commissioned to 

 keep down what would otherwise be a " plague of flies." 

 They are fly-butchers by profession; and just as our beef 

 and mutton butchers have their slaughter-house, their 

 steel, their knives, their pole-axe, their hooks, so are 

 these little slaughterers furnished with nets and traps, 

 with caves, with fangs, and hooks, and poison-bags, ready 

 for their constant work. They have, in fact, nothing elsa 

 to do: their whole lives are spent in slaughtering with 



