] 73 '^"^^ '"^ ^^® desert 



his defense it is commonly alleged that his "antisocial 

 conduct" should be excused for the same reason that sucli 

 conduct is often excused in human beings — because, that 

 is to say, it is actually the result not of original sin but of 

 certain social determinants. It seems that long before he 

 became a cowbird this fellow was a buffalo bird. And be- 

 cause he had to follow the wide ranging herds if he was 

 to profit from the insects they started up from the grass, 

 he could never settle down long enough to raise a family. 

 Like Rousseau and like Walt Whitman, he had to leave his 

 offspring (if any) behind. 



However that may be, it still can hardly be denied that 

 love in the desert has its still seamier side. Perhaps the 

 moth, whom we have already seen playing pimp to 

 a flower and profiting shamelessly from the affair, can 

 also be excused on socio-economic grounds. But far more 

 shocking things go on in dry climates as well as in wet, 

 and to excuse them we shall have to dig deeper than the 

 social system right down into the most ancient things-as- 

 they-used-to-be. For an example which seems to come 

 straight out of the most unpleasant fancies of the Mar- 

 quis de Sade, we might contemplate the atrocious behav- 

 ior of the so-called tarantula spider of the sandy wastes. 

 Here, unfortunately, is a lover whom all the world will 

 find it difficult to love. 



This tarantula is a great hairy fellow much like the kind 

 which sometimes comes north in a bunch of bananas and 

 which most people have seen exhibited under a glass in 

 some fruiterer's window. Most visitors to the desert hate 

 and fear him at sight, even though he is disinclined to 

 trouble human beings and is incapable even upon extreme 



