THE SPIDERS. 337 



ledge to their companions and their successors, and cannot 

 utilise it themselves ; or by Professor Carus, sen., who rose 

 in his "Comparative Psychology" (1.86G, p. 191) to the 

 astounding assertion : " The spider's web is woven by the 

 spider involuntarily, and involuntarily are the insects caught 

 therein used as food." Has Herr Carus, who considers him- 

 self capable of writing, a Comparative Pyschology or Mental 

 Science, never heard that spiders, like almost all animals, 

 use very admirable discrimination in the choice of their 

 food, although, also like all other animals and like man, 

 they are subject to occasional error? Mr. Moggridge, on 

 one occasion of watching the trap-door spiders at night, 

 brought an accidentally-captured beetle (Chrysomela Banksii) 

 into the immediate neighborhood of a half-open trap-door, 

 out of the crack of which lay the fore-legs of the inhabitant. 

 The door immediately flew open, the spider darted on the 

 beetle, and drew it into its house, whereupon the door shut 

 close. But after a few seconds, remarkable to say, the 

 door suddenly opened again, and the beetle came alive and 

 unhurt into sight i.e., the spider threw him out again. 

 Clearly, the beetle, which was far too small and weak to 

 make any important, resistance, had either some peculiarity 

 which made it unpleasant to the spider, or was unfitted for 

 food, and was therefore let go uninjured. A few minutes 

 afterwards Moggridge brought a woodlouse (0/riscus) to the 

 door of the spider, and saw this pulled in, and not let out 

 again. What becomes, in such cases, of the Carusian 

 theory of the involuntarily eaten spider's food ? 



But the ne phi* ultra of this melancholy kind of wisdom 

 is manifested by Professor Fr. Korner (" Instinct and Free 

 Will," 1874), who starts from the opinion that " all animals of 

 the same species do all the same things and in the same way 

 since thousands of years ago," and explains the spider's web 

 in the following intellectual fashion: "The spider must 

 make a web, because the stored up spinning material in its 

 body hurts it." A man, indeed, like Herr Korner who 

 answers the question, asked by himself, why the swallow 

 should build a mud nest, by saying " Because it is a house- 

 swallow;" or gives as explanation of the beaver-dam that 

 '" the beaver must build thus because it is in some measure 

 in his feet ; " or maintains as to the dog that he " knows 

 nothing of duty and conscience, of truth and devotion ; " or 



