Popular prejudice has always been against the spider; and it must be
admitted that there is a good deal to sanction the poet's unfavourable
verdict when he says regarding it--
"_Cunning_ and _fierce_, mixture abhorr'd."
Its cunning and craft have passed into a proverb; and all the children
know that its apparent treachery, in decoying the little fly into its
parlour, has been suitably expressed in verse. Its fierceness also is
quite equal to its cunning, and when the thought of its hairy-looking
appearance is added to the fact of the poison-fangs which it buries in
the bodies of its victims, there would seem to be enough to warrant the
general dislike with which the spider has at all times been regarded.
On the other hand, we must not forget these two things--(1) That the
spider is only fulfilling the instinct which an all-wise God has
implanted in it; and (2) that it is of great service to man in
diminishing the swarms of insects by which he is molested. Thomas
Edward, the Banffshire naturalist, calculated that a single pair of
swallows would destroy 282,000 insects in one year while rearing their
two broods, and sometimes they rear three. And if this be the service
rendered by a single pair of birds, what may not be accomplished by
those innumerable spiders that weave their gummy webs on every bush and
hedge-row, and spend the entire day, and sometimes the whole night, in
trapping and ridding the atmosphere of those annoying pests. Bereft of
these wily hunters, we should be like the Egyptians in the time of
Moses--plagued and eaten up of flies: so that in spite of prejudice and
general dislike the spider is occupying a real sphere of usefulness in
the world. And so may we. We can afford at times to pause and study
the hunter's skill, and do something to imitate its prowess.