OCTOBER 217 



reach the standard size of their species. By that time 

 they have developed certain faculties of amazing 

 variety and complexity. A large book might be filled 

 — nay, have not many volumes been filled already ? — 

 with descriptions of the constructive ingenuity and 

 deadly ferocity of different species of spider. After 

 studying these creatures, it is hard to decide which 

 feeling is uppermost, admiration for the engineering 

 skill and patient precision displayed by some species 

 in web-weaving, or horror at the ruthless ferocity of 

 the domestic life of other species. They are not to be 

 blamed for their career of rapine ; creatures of prey, 

 they are so constructed as to be unable to exist except 

 by devouring weaker creatures. Man, at all events, 

 who takes delight in laying big game low, tearing 

 ' rocketers ' out of the sky and palming off patent 

 foods upon calves while he appropriates the delicious 

 beverage destined for them by nature — Man, I say, is 

 hardly an appropriate critic of the spider's predatory 

 habits. Rather should he sympathise with it as a bold 

 and skilful hunter. We fear, but we do not hold in 

 abhorrence, the lion and the tiger ; why, then, do the 

 spider's habits fill us with disgust? Not because it 

 stabs its victim with a pair of poisoned daggers. The 

 late J. H. Fabre has shown that this is in truth a 

 merciful mode of despatch. He proved by repeated 

 experiments that the deadly Lycosa — the tarantula of 

 Southern Europe — never stabs its prey till it can fix its 

 fangs in the nape of the insect's neck. A wound in 

 that vital part drives the venom direct into the cervical 

 ganglia, causing instant paralysis and painless death. 



