408 FOOD Of INSECTS* 



tonied to associate the ideas of neglect and desertion by 

 man — associations which both in painting and allegory 

 have been often happily applied. Hogarth, when he 

 wished to produce a speaking picture of neglected cha- 

 rity, clothed the poor's box in one of his pieces with a 

 spider's web : and the Jews, in one of the fables with 

 which they have disfigured the records of holy writ, have 

 not less ingeniously availed themselves of the same idea. 

 They relate that the reason why Saul did not discover 

 David and his men in the cave of Adullam a was, that 

 God had sent a spider which had quickly woven a web 

 across the entrance of the cave in which they were con- 

 cealed; which being observed by Saul, he thought it 

 useless to investigate further a spot bearing such evident 

 proofs of the absence of any human being b . 



The most incurious observer must have remarked the 

 great difference which exists in the construction of spi- 

 ders' webs. Those which we most commonly see in 

 houses are of a woven texture similar to fine gauze, and 

 are appropriately termed webs ; while those most fre- 

 quently met with in the fields are composed of a series of 

 concentric circles united by radii diverging from the 

 centre, the threads being remote from each other. These 

 last, which in their simple state, or still more when 

 studded with dew drops, you must have a thousand 

 times admired, are with greater propriety termed nets ; 

 and the insects which form them proceeding on geome- 

 trical principles may be called geometricians, while the 

 former can aspire only to the humbler denomination of 



8 1 Sam. xxiv. 4. b Lesser, L, ii. 291, 



