234 EVENINGS AT THE MICROSCOPE 



the exception of rearing fresh, generations of slaughterers 

 and I suppose they think, and are intended to think, 

 of nothing else. 



I was one day in an omnibus, in the corner of which 

 sat a butcher. Presently a man got in, whose blue ging- 

 ham coat indicated the same trade. He seated himself op- 

 posite the other, and the two were soon in conversation. 

 "Do you know Jackson?" says A. "No," says B; "where 

 does he slaughter?" The reply gave me a new idea; he 

 evidently considered that "slaughtering" was the only oc- 

 cupation worthy of a man, and therefore the only one 

 worthy of man's thought. Spiders are just the same. If 

 an Epeira met a Clubiona, probably the first interchange 

 of civilities would be something like "Where do you 

 slaughter?" 



"No one," says Professor Eymer Jones, "who looks at 

 the armature of a Spider's jaws can mistake the intention 

 with which this terrible apparatus was planned. 'Murder' 

 is engraved legibly on every piece that enters into its com- 

 position." But surely the Professor is rather severe. 1 

 do not think this paragraph was written on an autumn 

 morning, when the flies had driven him out of bed prema- 

 turely early, by incessantly alighting on his nose; nor on 

 coming home from a summer evening's walk through the 

 marsh, when clouds of singing and stinging gnats had been 

 the only objects of cognizance to sight, hearing, and feel- 

 ing. If so, he would have been ready to pronounce "kill- 

 Ing no murder, ' ' and have blessed the slaughtering Spiders 

 as pursuing a most praiseworthy and useful occupation. 

 Circumstances change opinions. 



"We will not then touch the moral question; but just 

 look at this apparatus from the head of one of our com- 



