A rachne and the Poets. 195 



to watch this queer little tiger at work. It moves hardly 

 faster than the minute hand of a watch. Indeed it does 

 not seem to move at all, but rather as if the fly it was stalking 

 was a magnet drawing the spider towards it involuntarily. 

 The eye can hardly note the legs stir at all ; and yet, as you 

 watch, the interval between the tiny beast of prey and its 

 victim steadily, perceptibly, decreases. And at last it is 

 within leaping distance. And it gets ready. But with what 

 exasperating slowness ! Will it never jump ? And when it 

 does, you do not see it. The act is too rapid for the eye 

 to catch. But there all the same is the fly with the cat-spider 

 on its back rolling over and over. And the eyesight of the 

 small panther ! The lynx is purblind by comparison. And 

 as for its courage, the wild boar even does not excel it. 

 Indeed, it is so brave as to be almost tame. If you threaten 

 it with your finger, it turns fiercely on you, retreating back- 

 wards, and very soon it loses all fear of you, and will go 

 after any fly it sees in spite of you. 



In India I have, at Dholpur, seen the natives hunt ravine 

 deer with the cheetah, and I have often gone hawking, both 

 with the shahin off the wrist and the shikra in the hand. 

 But the cat-spider is just as good, and if I had as much 

 leisure as Queen Christina of Sweden, I should like to train 

 these little insects. 



Cruel ? Not at all. At least not to my thinking nor to 

 that of Providence. 



What a study in animal life it is, this crouching atom, so 

 small and yet so fatally deadly. The ledge of the window- 

 pane is a trifle rough ; see how the spider takes advantage 

 of every little pimple or speck of paint. Or it is smooth ; 

 see how it slips over the edge and, knowing it is quite out 

 of its victim's sight, makes short rushes, coming cautiously 

 up to peer over the edge after each rush to see if the fly has 

 changed its position. And then when it gets exactly under 

 the fly, watch it come up on the level ! Is the fly washing 



