IN FEATHERS AND FUR. 181 
There's one thing you may have noticed about us Spiders, we 
never go in crowds. Every one for himself, is our motto. Nor do 
we establish families, like those silly creatures the birds. No 
indeed ! 
A Spider mother needs no help in bringing up her babies ; and if 
the father isn't wise enough to get out of her way, she'll — eat him 
up, and serve him rightly too, I think. 
I suppose that with your usual vanity, you think human crea- 
tures are the first to go up in the air without wings, but I can tell 
you, you are very much mistaken. The small members of our 
family have been in the habit of making excursions into the air, for 
hundreds of years. They have no clumsy balloons either, they 
merely get up on some high place, throw out a thread or two till the 
air will support them, when they let go of earth and sail off as high 
as they desire. Your books call them Gossamer Spiders. 
I'm afraid you would get very tired before I could tell you 
about half the members of our family — some of them are very 
beautiful, with stripes and spots, and some have a hard sort of a shell 
and are beautiful in another way. Some of them are covered with 
spines and points and knobs, which give them a very odd appear- 
ance, though most of us — as you know — are round and graceful 
in shape. 
There's another thing in which we are peculiar, and different 
from almost any other live creature — we always rest with our heads 
down. I never could imagine how anybody could rest a moment 
with the head held up ; it seems so unnatural. 
