64 Flashlights o\ XATruM-: 



she can, so as to prevent his furious struj^^lcs from 

 unnecessarily destroyinj^ her precious weli ; tlien 

 she trundles and bundles him rapidly in a sort of 

 treadmill or merry-j^o-round, with her front pair 

 of le<^s ; holds on to the web and steadies iier- 

 self with her two middle pairs ; and uses her hind 

 pair, with her comb-like claws, to distribute the 

 silk which she winds in coils about his winj^s 

 and bo:ly. Vou can see now how useful are her 

 eij4iit le^s to her. Each fulfils its own function. 

 In about a minute she has twirled him round and 

 round, and swaddled him hrmly in a strong silken 

 coverin<f. I rej^ret to say she does not then pro- 

 ceed to eat him at once, but keeps him imprisoned 

 in torture for an indelinite perio:!, tightly bound 

 in silken cords, till she desires to dine off him. 

 Tlie unhappy lly is bound hand and foot — or, 

 ratiier, winj^ and \cg — till it is absolutely incapable 

 of the least resistance ; it is then kept in its close 

 prison with a cruelty more than mediieval, and 

 at last devoured alive piecemeal by its ruthless 

 captor. The morals of spiders are scarcely better 

 than those of Chinamen. 



Rosalind's chani^es of costume were also most 

 theatrical and interesting. Like her namesake in 

 the play, she appeared every now and aj^ain 

 in a different suit of clothes, and rejected 

 her old ones. The maimer of making the 

 new suit, however, and of shuftlintf otf the old, 

 was extremely interestin<^. She moulted periodi- 

 cally ; but at each moult the whole external 

 skeleton was sloughed off, like a snake's skin 



