It is somewhat strange that although, where other tribes of living
creatures are concerned, I am something of a naturalist, spiders I have
always observed and admired in a non-scientific spirit, and this must be
my excuse for mentioning the habits of some spiders without giving their
specific names--an omission always vexing to the severely-technical
naturalist. They have ministered to the love of the beautiful, the
grotesque, and the marvellous in me; but I have never _collected_ a
spider, and if I wished to preserve one should not know how to do it. I
have been "familiar with the face" of these monsters so long that I have
even learnt to love them; and I believe that if Emerson rightly predicts
that spiders are amongst the things to be expelled from earth by the
perfected man of the future, then a great charm and element of interest
will be lost to nature. Though loving them, I cannot, of course, feel
the same degree of affection towards all the members of so various a
family. The fairy gossamer, scarce seen, a creature of wind and
sunshine; the gem-like Epeira in the centre of its Starry web; even the
terrestrial Salticus, with its puma-like strategy, certainly appeal more
to our aesthetic feelings than does the slow heavy Mygale, looking at a
distance of twenty yards away, as he approaches you, like a gigantic
cockroach mounted on stilts. The rash fury with which the female
wolf-spider defends her young is very admirable; but the admiration she
excites is mingled with other feelings when we remember that the brave
mother proves to her consort a cruel and cannibal spouse.
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