EIGHTLEGCED FRIENDS, 121 



tiniioiis starvation. As usual, nature works with cruel 

 lavishness. There are just as many spiders at any 

 given minute as there are insects enough in the world or 

 in their area to feed upon. Every spider lays hundreds 

 of eggs, so as to make up for the average infant mortality 

 by starvation, or by the attacks of ichneumon flies, or by 

 being eaten themselves in the young stage, or by other 

 casualties. And so with all other species. Each produces 

 as many young on the average as will allow for the 

 ordinary infant mortality of their kind, and leave enough 

 over just to replace the parents in the next generation. 

 And that's one of the reasons why it's no use punishing 

 Lucy and Eliza for their misdeeds in this world. Kill 

 them off if you will, and before next week a dozen more 

 like them will dispute with one another the vacant place 

 you have thus created in the balanced economy of that 

 microcosm the garden. 



Our observations upon Lucy and Eliza, however, had 

 the effect of making us take an increased interest thence- 

 forth in spiders in general, which till that time we had 

 treated with scant courtesy, and set us about learning 

 something as to the extraordinary variety of life and 

 habit to be found within the range of this single group 

 of arthropods, at first sight so extremely alike in their 

 shapes, their appearance, their morals, and their manners. 

 It's perfectly astonishing, though, when one comes to 

 look into it in detail, how exceedingly diverse spiders are 

 in their mode of life, their structure, and the variety of 

 uses to which they put their one extremely distinctive 

 structural organ, the spinnerets. I will only say here 

 that some spiders use these peculiar glands to form light 



