INTRODUCTION. 111. 



mutton-and-beef-eating creatures to abuse the poor spiders for 

 doing not only what they themselves do, but also for doing a 

 good turn by lessening the numbers of somo of the greatest, among 

 the minor torments of human life — gnats, flios, andmosquitos. Tho 

 same correspondent recommended as a worthier study, and a 

 higher theme for the pen, "the little busy bee, and the pretty, 

 innocent singing birds." I presume that he, or she, must have 

 been quito ignorant of such episodes in bee-life as the ruthless 

 massacre of the male bees, when their services are no longer required; 

 and certainly the joyous song- thrush could never have been seen 

 in the act of immolating snails on the sacrificial stone, or tugging 

 the unwilling worm from its mother earth, with the nibbling 

 process of dismemberment which invariably follows ! 



"Well! let us hope that the busy bee and the singing birds 

 have, since then, been really studied, and with a less prejudiced 

 mind, and if so we may be sure the crafty and (it may even bo 

 admitted) blood-thirsty spider will become an object of less dis- 

 gust — may be, of some rational interest. 



Difference between Spiders and Insects. 



A spider then is a creature that spins — a Spinner ; not like a 

 silkworm, through its mouth, but by means of special external 

 organs — spinners — placed at the hinder extremity of the 

 abdomen (pi. i., figs. Igg, 6, 10, \\<L). A spider differs from 

 all the insect tribes in not undergoing any metamorphosis ; it 

 is a spider from first to last, and merely undergoes sevoral 

 moultings or castings of the skin as it goes on, after its first 

 exclusion from tho egg, to maturity. Tho body is divided into 

 two, instead of (as in insects) three, visibly distinct parts. These 

 parts are in insacts — tho caput, thorax, and abdomon ; but in 

 tho spider the caput and thorax, with its sevoral segments (callod 

 the cephalo-thorax), are soldorod togothor. The groovos or 

 indentations denoting tho once separate portions are, however, 

 almost invariably more or less visible ; and the abdomon is joined 

 to tho cephalo-thorax by a short pediclo, through which tho 

 various organs of the former are connected with those of the 



