338 THE SPIDERS. 



has nothing better to say of a human child than that it is- 

 " only a wax-like piece of flesh ; " such a man ought not to- 

 expect anyone to trouble himself seriously with contradicting 

 his printed folly. 



Pie who objects to the application of the evolution theory 

 to the above-mentioned facts on the ground that it is not 

 clear why, in spite of such long past ages, many imperfect 

 and as it were primitive forms of the nests of the earth- 

 working spiders should exist side by side with the more- 

 perfect, forgets that it is not different with us men, although 

 we are wont to claim progress as a human privilege, and 1 

 although the antiquity of the human race on the earth must 

 be reckoned in all pi'obability as of hundreds of thousands of 

 years : not only is the number of cave-dwellings and huts of 

 the most primitive kind in which men live, far in excess of 

 that of the houses and palaces of civilised nations ; but also the- 

 comparative distance between them appears far more striking 

 than that which we have found between the abodes of trap- 

 door spiders. 



Finally, before leaving the interesting spidef-folk, we- 

 may remember a trap-door spider discovered by Dr. Living- 

 stone, the famous African traveller, near the Delilo Lake iii 

 South Africa. " A large reddish spider (Myyale,)" says the- 

 discoverer, (" Pop. Accounts of Travels in South Africa,"" 

 ch. xvii., p. 221,) " which the natives call Scliili, is seen. 

 running about here with great nimbleness. Its nest is- 

 closed in the most ingenious manner with a lid or door, 

 about the size of a shilling, hanging from a hinge. The- 

 inner surface of this door is covered with a pure white silken 

 paper-like material, while the outside looks exactly like the 

 surrounding surface of the ground, so that when the door is 

 shut it is impossible to find the nest. The hole can therefore- 

 only be seen when the inhabitant has gone out and has left 

 the door open behind it." 



