158 THE SPIDER KIND. 



or three turns in its web, so as completely to immesh it, and 

 there leaves it impotently to struggle until the little tyrant comes 

 to its appetite. Why the spider should at one time kill its prey, 

 and at another suffer it to struggle in the toils for several hours 

 together, I am not able to say ; perhaps it only likes its prey 

 newly killed, and therefore delays to put the captive to death 

 until it is to be eaten. 



It has been the opinion of some philosophers, that the spider 

 was in itself both male and female ; but Lister has been able to 

 distinguish the sexes, and to perceive that the males were much 

 less in size than the females. But this is not the chief pecu- 

 liarity ; for, different from all other animals, except the fish 

 called the Ray, it has its instruments of generation placed in 

 the fore-arms, which have been already described. When these 

 animals copulate, they for some time seize each other with their 

 legs and arms ; then appear the instruments of generation in 

 the male, as if bursting out from the points of its fore-feet, and 

 are inserted into the receptacle beneath the body of the female. 



The female generally lays from nine hundred to a thousand 

 eggs in a season : they are of a bluish colour, speckled with 

 black, and separated from each other by a glutinous substance, 

 not unlike frog-spawn water. These eggs are large or small in 

 proportion to the size of the animal that produces them. In some 

 they are as large as a grain of mustard-seed, in others they are 

 scarcely visible. The female never begins to lay till she be two 

 years old at least, and her first brood is never so numerous as 

 when she has come to her greatest maturity. 



When the number of eggs the spider has brought forth have 

 remained for an hour or two to dry after exclusion, the little 

 animal then prepares to make them a bag, where they are to be 

 hatched until they leave the shell. Tor this purpose she spins 

 a web four or five times stronger than that made for catching 

 flies ; and, besides, lines it within-side by a down, which she 

 plucks from her own breast. This bag, when completed, is as 

 thick as paper, is smooth within-side, but rougher without. 

 Within this they deposit their eggs ; and it is almost incredible 

 to relate the concern and industry which they bestow in the 

 preservation of it. They stick it by means of their glutinous 

 fluid to the end of their body ; so that the animal, when thus 

 loaded, appears as if she had one body placed behind another. 

 If this bag be separated from her by any accident, she employs 

 all her assiduity to stick it again in its former situation, and sel- 

 dom abandons her treasure but with her life. When the young 

 ones are excluded from their shells, within the bag, they remain 

 for some time in their confinement, until the female instinctively 

 knowing their maturity, bites open their prison, and sets them 



