234 EVENINGS AT THE MICROSCOPE. 



OHAPTEE XIII. 



8PIDEE8 AND MITES. 



Spiders, I am sure, are not favourites with you. 

 With the exception of the poor prisoner in the Bastile, 

 who had succeeded in taming a Spider — the only crea- 

 ture besides himself that inhabited his dungeon — I do 

 not think I have ever heard of any one who loved or 

 admired Spiders, morally. Yet, physically, we may 

 find much to admire in them, as not a few naturalists 

 have done before us ; there are men who have devoted 

 their lives to the study of this unamiablo race, and 

 who have discovered in them the same wondrous 

 skill, and the same perfect adaptation of organ to func- 

 tion, of structure to habit, that mark all God's works, 

 whether we think them pretty or ugly, amiable or re- 

 pulsive. 



I am going to show you some of these pieces of 

 mechanism. Kemember that the whole tribe is sent 

 into the world to perform one business, — they are com- 

 missioned to keep down what would otherwise be a 

 " plague of flies." They are fly-butchers by profession ; 

 and just as our beef- and mutton-butchers have their 

 slaughter-house, their steel, their knives, their pole-axe, 

 their hooks, so are these little slaughterers furnished 

 with nets and traps, with caves, with fangs, and hooks, 



