206 The Poets and Nature. 



suppose yourself a fly, and that spider as large as yourself, 

 and then conceive, if you can, the blood-curdling horror of 

 such an apparition suddenly confronting you. If you had 

 human wits about you before you met it, the odds are that 

 you would be a gibbering idiot for ever afterwards. Human 

 reason could not possibly stand the shock of such a fearful 

 sight. Spiders the size of bullocks would kill at sight. 



" Mock the majesty of man's high birth, 

 Despise his bulwarks, and unpeople earth." 



No wonder then that the fly was reluctant to settle on 

 the scabious, and that it " danced " about the flower so long, 

 and eventually decided not to sit down. But the "giddiness " 

 and " light-heartedness " has all gone out of the picture. 



Of course I do not assert that my idea is correct. It may 

 be only a fancy. But it is, at any rate, perfectly safe to 

 assume that, in a very large number of cases, the precipitancy 

 of a fly's departure is due to a very proper discretion, and 

 not to silliness. Also, that very often indeed when an insect 

 seems unreasonable in its sudden changes of intention, it 

 has, as a matter of fact, the best of all reasons for its conduct, 

 namely, escape from death. 



The purple cushion of the scabious, so warm with the sun 

 shining full on it, and each of the little flowerets that compose 

 the disc so full of fragrant honey, is the very ideal of a resting- 

 place for a fly. And so, too, thinks the fly, till there grows 

 up gradually over the edge of the flower two fine green legs 

 tipped with little claws. Then it is time to be off there 

 is none to waste. If the fly stands upon the order of its going, 

 there will follow the legs a pair of grass-green nippers, 

 exquisitely sharp at the points, toothed, too, on the inner 

 side, and hollowed like a cobra's fang to carry poison. And 

 above the grass-green nippers will be two rows of eyes as 

 bright as diamonds and that is the last the fly will remember. 

 So it wisely goes at once. 



