SFIJDERS. 51 



CASE their movement, and the very next day the frost recommenced 

 with great severity, and continued long enough to allow the 

 Republican troops to overrun the whole of the then undefended 

 country. Perhaps the consolation spiders have afforded to poor 

 prisoners like M. d'Isjonval by giving them some object of interest 

 to occupy their minds, or the support to their courage which they 

 have supphed to men in difficulties— such as Bruce^s watching 

 the seven times repeated efforts of his spider to attain its object 

 —is even more deserving of commemoration; and although doubt- 

 less it is only the very few who have had patience and ability to 

 get the spiders to recognise them or to establish friendly relations 

 with them, some men would appear to have actually succeeded in 

 doing so, or at least to have thought so, which was perhaps, just as 

 good. Not all, however ; M. Alphonse Karr, in his '' Guepes," 

 tells that when he was consigned to prison for a iew days for 

 some infringement of the laws of the press in the reign of Louis 

 Philippe, he tried the experiment without his usual success. " In 

 imitation of divers celebrated prisoners,'' says he, " I searched for 

 a spider in order to instruct it— I found a little black one, but it 

 shows little capacity." 



Spiders may be very naturally divided into two sections— the 

 large, mostly tropical species, which have four breathing sacs and 

 four spinnerets, and the ordinary spiders, with which we are 

 familiar, that have only two breathing sacs (where there are 

 apparently four, two of them are not sacs but trachece) and six 

 spinnerets. The first constitute the family of 



MYGALID^E or Crab-Spiders. 

 As already said all spiders have a large claw or poison fang • 

 hinged on to the front of their mandibles, but this family is dis- 

 tinguished by this claw being very large, hard, and polished— so 

 much so that in Brazil it is sometimes set in gold and used as a 

 toothpick, and it is thought to have some specific value in 

 keeping away toothache. In the other section the fang moves 



