THE SPIDERS. 319 



partly because it then rouses no suspicion of artifice among 

 the victims swarming around. They therefore not only 

 shake them from time to time so as to cleanse them from dust, 

 but rid them directly of all larger rubbish accidently falling 

 into them. Herr A. Frenzel, a smelting chemist, writes 

 as follows to the author under date November 14th, 1875. 

 from Freiberg, in Sa'xony : " One day on rising from dinner 

 I went into a room with a splinter in my hand, which I had 

 used as a toothpick. A spider of the genus Epeira has 

 spun her vertical web over a window in this room and sat 

 quietly in the middle. I idly bit little bits off the splinter 

 to bombard the spider with. I did not hit the spider but 

 only the web, in which the bits remained hanging. When 

 I had finished my bombardment the spider ran to the 

 nearest bit, seized it, ran to the lower edge of the web, and let 

 it fall to the ground. This manoeuvre was repeated until 

 every bit of wood had been cleared off the web. After a 

 second attack on its abode with wood-splinters, the spider 

 did not shrink from a second cleansing of its web." That 

 in spite of their extreme shyness, spiders can be tamed, and 

 become accustomed to human beings which show them kind- 

 nesses is proved by many facts and experiments which have 

 attained to a certain amount of fame. Prisoners especially, 

 in order to soften the rigors of solitude, have tamed spiders, 

 so that they came at their call and took food from their 

 hands, like the spiders of the unfortunate king Christian II. 

 of Denmark. Dr. Moschkau, of Gohlis, near Leipsic, writes 

 as follows to the author, on August 28th, 1876 : "In Oder- 

 witz (?). where I lived in 1873 and 1874, I noticed one day 

 in a half -dark corner of the ante-room a tolerably respect- 

 able spider's web, in which a well-fed cross-spider had 

 made its home, and sat at the nest-opening early and late, 

 watching for some flying or creeping food. I was acci- 

 dentally several times a witness of the craft with which it 

 caught its victim and rendered it harmless, and it soon 

 became a regular duty to carry it flies several times during 

 the day, which I laid down before its door with a pair of 

 pincers. At first this feeding seemed to arouse small confi- 

 dence, the pincers perhaps being in fault, for it let many of 

 the flies escape again, or only seized them when it knew 

 that they were within reach of its abode. After awhile, 

 however, the spider came each time and took the flies out of 



