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Marvels of the Universe 



coloured in one way or another on the upper or under sides, the tints of the umler-side beins^ exposed 

 to view when the animals stand up with their fore-limbs raised and fangs extended in their habitual 

 attitude of defence. Formidable, nevertheless, as these spiders are, mortality amongst them, at all 

 events when young, must be very high, judging from the large numbers of eggs they produce, as many 

 as 2.000 having been counted in a single cocoon. Probably tropical ants destroy numbers of them. 

 Even the full-grown spiders fall victims to large solitary wasps ; and it is said that the contests 

 between these redoubtable antagonists always result in the spider's death. 



THE CACHALOT OR SPERM WHALE 



BY FR.VXK T. BULLEX, F.R.G.S. 



MoxsTROUS as are the proportions of this amazing whale, in mere size he is far surpassed by two of 

 the whalebone whales, the Sulphvu"-Bottom and the Bowhead or Arctic Right Whale ; his utmost 

 size being about seventy feet in length, forty-five feet in greatest girth, and weight about one 

 hundred and ten tons ; tail one hundred and twenty square feet in area, and utmost speed 

 fourteen miles per hour. And yet for several reasons he has an entirely indisputable right to be 

 considered the Monarch of the Peoples of the Sea. First of these reasons comes the great fact 

 that, while ne\'er aggressive, like all true heroes, when attacked he will turn and fight, and unless 

 very speedily disabled, becomes the most terrible antagonist imaginable. Secondly, in majesty 

 and terror of his appearance. There is something positively appalling in the contemplation 

 of his colossal head, which appears, when the animal is poised upright in the water, like 

 some huge flat-topped column of black marble against which the waves beat vainly. Adjunct 

 to the head is the immense lower jaw, a tapering shaft of bone, sometimes twenty feet in length, 

 with a double row of massive back-curving teeth, between fiftv and sixty in number and several 



IBu A. Ticidle. 



A SCHOOL OF SPERM WHALES. 



One huse bull will convoy a harem of cows and young bulls, which latter fight furiously among themselves at intervals, 

 until one of them, victor over all the rest, challenges the great leader and ousts him from his position. 



