184 
LIFE, IN ITS INTERMEDIATE FORMS. 
CHAPTER XX. 
Araohnida. 
(Spiders, Scorpions, and Mites.') 
Tiie common consent of mankind regards most of those 
creatures of which we are about to speak with revulsion 
and abhorrence ; and it must be confessed that the closer 
examination which the scientific naturalist bestows on 
them, has only resulted in more firmly fixing upon them 
the stigma of a bad character, — decidedly, undeniably bad. 
The poet’s verdict is true, when he calls the Spider — 
“ Cunning and fierce— mixture abhorr’d." 
Bloodthirsty and vindictive, treacherous and cruel even to 
their own kind, bold and prompt in warfare, ever vigilant, 
full of stratagem and artifice, highly venomous, lurking in 
darkness, endowed with curious instincts, and furnished 
with many accessory means for the capture and destruc- 
tion of other animals — the Spiders and Scorpions do not 
move our esteem, it must be confessed ; and an entomo- 
logist of the highest eminence,* carrying out the notion 
that the seen things of nature are symbols and pictures 
of the unseen and spiritual, views in these creatures the 
Kirby, Bridgewater Treatise. 
