182 SPIDERS 



fortuitous concourse of atoms.' Fortuitous the con- 

 course cannot be, for atoms act in accordance with 

 decipherable rule. To deny the existence of a Creator 

 is merely to shelve the problem out of reach, shirking 

 the question of origin of the atoms and of the unerring 

 code with which they comply. 



But I have been led far further than I intended 

 when I laid down the Cambridge volume on Crustacea ! 



XXXII 



Crustaceans are recognised in classification as be- 

 longing to the same phylum or nation as 



Spiders o o -^ ;? ^ 



insects, myriapods, and arachnids, 'which, 

 observes Mr. Shipley in dealing with Arachnids in the 

 Cambridge Natural History, ' from the point of view of 

 numbers of species and individuals, is the dominant one 

 on the planet.' The Arachnids cover a very wide range 

 of form and habit ; and among them perhaps no order 

 of animals exhibits such a strange combination of 

 indiscriminate ferocity, domestic solicitude, and con- 

 structive skill as the Aranece or spiders. One does not 

 often meet with a man who repines because he has not 

 been born a girl; nor, meeting such an individual, is 

 one likely to hanker much after his society; but 

 nobody can read Mr. Shipley's account of the relations 

 prevailing between spiders of different sexes without 

 concluding that the males of that race have good cause 

 to wish that they were females. 



'The strange peril braved by the male in courting the 

 female, which has, as far as is known, no parallel in any 



