212 
BRANDED WITH UGLINESS. 
Nay more: having frequent occasion to deal with powerful insects, and 
even little birds, they co-operate in the hour of peril, and lend each 
other, as it were, a helping hand. 
But this gregarious mode of living is wholly exceptional, confined 
to certain species, and peculiarly favoured climates. Everywhere else 
the spider, through its organism and the fatality of its life, assumes the 
character of the hunter, of the savage, who, living upon uncertain prey, 
remains envious, mistrustful, exclusive, and solitary. 
But remember that it does not resemble the ordinary hunter, who 
gets quit with his journeys, his exertions, and his activity. The 
spider’s hunt costs it dearly, if I may venture to say so, and demands 
an incessant outlay. Every day, every hour, it must draw from its own 
substance the essential element of the network which is to provide it 
with food and renew that substance. Accordingly, it starves in order 
to nourish, and exhausts in order to recruit itself; it grows lean on 
the dubious hope of afterwards growing fat. Its life is a lottery, 
remitted to the risk of a thousand unforeseen contingencies. Hence, it 
cannot fail to develop into an unquiet creature, sympathizing but 
coldly with its kind, in whom it sees possible competitors,—in a word, 
it is a fatally egotistical animal. And were it not so, it would perish. 
The worst of it is, as far as the poor creature is concerned, that it 
is profoundly *igly. It is not one of those which, ugly to the naked 
eye, are rehabilitated by the microscope. The overwhelming speciality 
of its career has the effect, as we see among men, of attenuating one 
limb, exaggerating another, and prevents anything like harmony: the 
blacksmith is frequently a hunchback. In the same manner the spider 
is pot-bellied. Nature has sacrificed everything to its function, its 
wants, and the industrial apparatus which will satisfy those wants. It 
is an artisan, a rope-maker, a spinner, and a weaver. Do not look at 
its figure, but at the product of its art. It is not only a spinner, but 
a spinning-mill. 
Concentrated and circular, with eight feet around its body, and 
eight vigilant eyes in its head, it causes astonishment by the eccentric 
prominency of its enormous belly. An ignoble feature, wherein the 
careless observer reads the result of gormandising ! Alas, it is just the 
