THE want of balance in man’s appreciation of things, and the unreasonable nature of his prejudices, are in nothing shown more strikingly than in the view he takes of the spider. His objection to the spider is based upon the fact that it kills its prey and devours it. So do the great majority of creatures on earth. The next objection is that it catches it in a net; but for every fly the spider catches the fisherman will take a thousand fish, also in a net, and no one imputes it to him as harm. The fisherman, indeed, is regarded with a sort of special affection by the community. He is spoken of as the hardy fisherman, the honest fisherman, and, at any rate in his case, the fact that he catches his fish in a net is not considered in any way reprehensible. Then, it is urged against the spider that, having set its net, it hides from view, and, having enticed the fly into its bower, rushes out and devours it. But how about man? The fly-fisher casts cunningly devised and tempting lures over the fish, while himself keeping, as far as possible, hidden from view. The trawler arms himself with glittering imitations of fish, studded with deadly hooks; the wild-duck gunner paddles up noiselessly in a punt, and shoots down his birds while feeding; or hides himself in a bower, and brings them down as they pass unsuspectingly overhead. Man uses craft, and skill, and cunning to capture his prey of all sorts, and exults in his success. He would laugh to scorn the accusation that he was a lurking assassin, and yet he assumes a tone of lofty moral superiority towards the spider, who uses the gifts nature has bestowed upon him not for sport or amusement, but for existence. No spider is recorded as having employed a large body of his friends to drive up two or three thousand half-tamed flies to be slaughtered by him as a form of amusement. We have no doubt that such spiders as may be engaged about their business, within view of slaughter so perpetrated by human beings, must quiver in their webs with righteous indignation. Let us, then, have no more maudlin sentimentality about the cruelty of the spider. It obtains its food by the chase, and in so doing exhibits a skill, a dexterity, and a patience unsurpassed by any living creature.

The spider has a wonderful power of adaptability to circumstances. The great fat-bodied spider of our gardens is necessarily slow-moving, and therefore builds its web and waits. There are others less burdened by nature who are fierce and active, who hunt their prey on a sunny wall as a dog might hunt a rabbit, quartering the ground with restless activity, and pouncing upon the prey with the spring of a tiger. Some for preference build thick webs in dark corners, festooning cornices with filmy drapery, to the annoyance of good housewives. Others, tiny creatures these, will throw out a few threads, and, floating upon them, allow themselves to be wafted vast distances through the air. There is the water spider, who, long before man invented the diving bell, dwelt below the water, building its nest there like a thimble, open at the bottom, and then laboriously carrying down little globules of air and releasing them beneath it, until the water is expelled, and it can dwell in the little silver bell it has prepared for itself. Then, too, there is the spider who builds for itself a box in the ground with a hinged lid as skilfully contrived as any of man’s inventions, and, holding this tightly down, can defy the efforts of any foe likely to assail it. Not even the ant shows a wider intelligence, a more perfect aptitude for using the tools with which nature has provided it, and a greater power of adapting itself to circumstances than does the spider, and yet, while the ant and the bee are held up as examples to our children, the spider is passed over as an objectionable creature, of no account.

The spider is capable of being tamed, and has before now been made a pet of by prisoners, who have so domesticated it that it would come at their call, take food from their fingers, and come to treat them with absolute fearlessness, if not affection. It is not to be pretended that the spider possesses no bad qualities. Were it otherwise, it would stand on a far loftier level with man. With individuals of its own species it is exceptionally quarrelsome, and will not only kill, but eat a conquered adversary. It is, undoubtedly, an advanced socialist. So long as its supply of the viscid fluid from which it constructs its web holds out, it will build its house and defend it against all comers. But when this is exhausted, it immediately adopts radical principles, and upon the theory that there is no right in property, proceeds at once to rob a neighbour of the fruits of its labour, and to instal itself in the property from which it has ejected the owner. It is a little singular that the socialists have not adopted the spider as the badge and emblem of their creed, in recognition of the identity of their principles.

Unhappily, a far darker blot than this rests upon the character of the female spider, who is much larger and more powerful than the male. She is an excellent mother, and will defend her bag of eggs with her life; but she is a mournful example of the working of the rights of women carried out to the fullest extent. This can never occur in the human race, because, fortunately for man, he is the stronger. Were it otherwise, we may be sure that that section of females who clamour for equality would be content with nothing less than absolute supremacy. The female spider lives up to this. Being the stronger, she does not argue with her husband, but when she has no further use for him she simply kills him and eats him. Looking at the matter from man’s point of view, we are unable to find any justification for this conduct. Our escape from the fate of the male spider is largely due to the fact that our females are less strong than we: indeed, in spite of physical weakness they not unfrequently hold us in subjection, and occasionally rule us with a rod of iron. Metaphorically, they may devour us by their extravagance; but they have, happily, no ability to carry out to the fullest the methods of the female spider. The spider, it must be owned, stands almost, if not altogether, alone in the commission of this crime of uxoricide. So strange an exception is this to the general rule of nature, that one is driven to suppose that the female spiders must, perhaps in remotely distant times, have suffered from terrible treatment and ill usage at the hand of the males, and that having in course of ages attained to greater strength than is possessed by their mates, they now revenge upon them the wrongs of their far back ancestors. We do not assert that this is absolutely the true explanation of their conduct; but it is clear that some events of an altogether exceptional kind must have occurred in the history of the spider to bring about so unexampled and unnatural a state of things among the two sexes, and to embitter to such a degree the female against the male. It is lamentable to have to record so evil a trait in the character of one of the most intelligent and intellectual of insects, but it would be unfair to other and less highly gifted creatures were we to pass it over in silence.