believing tropical nature to be so rich in colouring, and circumpolar
nature to be so dingy and unlovable? Simply thus, I believe. The
tropics embrace the largest land areas in the world, and are richer by
a thousand times in species of plants and animals than all the rest of
the earth in a lump put together. That richness necessarily results
from the fierceness of the competition. Now among this enormous mass of
tropical plants it naturally happens that some have finer flowers than
any temperate species; while as to the animals and birds, they are
undoubtedly, on the whole, both larger and handsomer than the fauna of
colder climates. But in the general aspect of tropical nature an
occasional bright flower or brilliant parrot counts for very little
among the mass of lush green which surrounds and conceals it. On the
other hand, in our museums and conservatories we sedulously pick out
the rarest and most beautiful of these rare and beautiful species, and
we isolate them completely from their natural surroundings. The
consequence is that the untravelled mind regards the tropics mentally
as a sort of perpetual replica of the hot-houses at Kew, superimposed
on the best of Mr. Bull's orchid shows. As a matter of fact, people who
know the hot world well can tell you that the average tropical woodland
is much more like the dark shade of Box Hill or the deepest glades of
the Black Forest. For really fine floral display in the mass, all at
once, you must go, not to Ceylon, Sumatra, Jamaica, but to the far
north of Canada, the Bernese Oberland, the moors of Inverness-shire,
the North Cape of Norway. Flowers are loveliest where the climate is
coldest; forests are greenest, most luxuriant, least blossoming, where
the conditions of life are richest, warmest, fiercest. In one word,
High Life is always poor but beautiful.
EIGHT-LEGGED FRIENDS.
A singular opportunity was afforded me last summer for making myself
thoroughly at home with the habits and manners of the common English
geometrical spider. By the pure chance of circumstance, two ladies of
that intelligent and interesting species were kind enough to select for
their temporary residence a large pane of glass just outside my
drawing-room window. Now, it so happened that this particular pane was
constructed not to open, being, in fact, part of a big bow-window, the
alternate sashes of which were alone intended for ventilation. Hence it
came to pass that by diligent care I was enabled to preserve my two
eight-legged acquaintances from the devouring broom of the British
housemaid, and to keep them constantly under observation at all times
and seasons during a whole summer. Of course this result was only
obtained by a distinct exercise of despotic authority, for I know those
poor spiders were a constant eyesore in Ellen's sight--the housemaid of
the moment bore the name of Ellen--but I persisted in my prohibition of
any forcible ejectment, and I carried my point in the end in the very
teeth of that constituted domestic authority. So successful was I,
indeed, that when at last we flitted southwards ourselves with the
swallows on our annual migration to the Mediterranean shores, we left
Lucy and Eliza--those were the names we had given them--in undisturbed
possession of their prescriptive rights in the drawing-room windows.
This year they are gone, and our home is left spiderless.
They were curious and uninviting pets, I'm bound to admit, those great
juicy-looking creatures. Nobody could say that any form of spider is
precisely what our Italian friends prettily describe in their liquid
way as _simpatico_. At times, indeed, the conduct of Lucy and Eliza was
so peculiarly horrible and blood-curdling in its atrocity, that even I,
their best friend, who had so often interceded for their lives and
saved them from the devastating duster of the aggressive
housemaid--even I myself, I say, more than once debated in my own mind
whether I was justified in letting them go on any longer in their
career of crime unchecked, or whether I ought not rather to rush out at
once, avenging rag in hand, and sweep them away at one fell swoop from
the surface of a world they disgraced with their unbridled wickedness.
Eliza, in particular, I'm constrained to allow, was a perfect monster
of vice--a sort of undeveloped arachnid Borgia, quick to slay and
relentless in pursuit; a mass of eight-legged sins, stained with the
colourless gore of ten thousand struggling victims, and absolutely
without a single redeeming point in her hateful character. And yet,
whenever any more than usually horrible massacre of some pretty and
innocent fly almost moved me in my righteous wrath to rush out into the
garden in hot haste and put an end at once to the cruel wretch's
existence with a judicial antimacassar, a number of moral scruples,
such as could only be adequately resolved by the editor of the
_Spectator_, always occurred spontaneously to my mind and conscience
just in time to ensure that wicked Eliza a fresh spell of life in which
to continue unabashed her atrocious behaviour.
Has man, I asked myself at such moments, mere human man, any right to
set himself up in the place of earthly providence, as so much better
and more moral than insentient nature? If the spider cruelly devours
living flies and intelligent or highly sensitive bees, we must at least
remember that she has no choice in the matter, and that, as the poet
justly remarks, ''tis her nature to.' But then, on the other hand, it
might be plausibly argued that 'tis our nature equally to kill the
creature that we see so hatefully fulfilling the law of its own cruel
being. And yet again it might be pleaded by any able counsel who
undertook the defence of Lucy or Eliza on her trial for her life
against her human accusers, that she was impelled to all these evil
deeds by maternal affection, one of the noblest and most unselfish of
animal instincts. Moreover, if the spider didn't prey, it would
obviously die; and it seems rather hard on any creature to condemn it
to death for no better reason than because it happens to have been born
a member of its own kind, and not of any other and less morally
objectionable species. Jedburgh justice o£ that sort rather savours of
the method pursued by the famous countryman who was found cutting a
harmless amphibian into a hundred pieces with his murderous spade, and
saying spitefully as he did so, at every particularly savage cut: 'I'll
larn ye to be a twoad, I will; I'll larn ye to be a twoad!'
Nevertheless, in spite of all this my vaunted philosophy, I will
frankly confess that more than once Eliza and Lucy sorely tried my
patience, and that I was often a good deal better than half-minded in
my soul to rush out in a feverish fit of moral indignation and put an
end to their ghastly career of crime without waiting to hear what they
had to say in their own favour, showing cause why sentence of death
should not be executed upon them. And I would have done it, I believe,
had it not been for that peculiar arrangement of the drawing-room
windows, which made it impossible to get at the culprits direct,
without going out into the garden and round the house; which, of
course, is a severe strain in wet or windy weather to put upon
anybody's moral enthusiasm. In the end, therefore, I always gave the
evil-doers the benefit of the doubt; and I only mention my ethical
scruples in the matter here lest scoffers should say, when they come to
read what manner of things Lucy and Eliza did: 'Oh yes, that's just
like those scientific folks; they're always so cold-blooded. He could
stand by and see these poor helpless flies tortured slowly to death,
without a chance for their lives, and never put out a helping hand to
save them!' Well, I would only ask you one question, my sapient friend,
who talk like that: Has it ever occurred to you that, if you kill one
spider, you merely make room in the overflowing economy of nature for
another to pick up a dishonest livelihood? Have you ever reflected that
the prime blame of spiderhood rests with Nature herself (if we may
venture to personify that impersonal entity); and that she has provided
such a constant supply or relay of spiders as will amply suffice to
fill up all the possible vacancies that can ever occur in insect-eating
circles? Unless you have considered all these points carefully, and
have an answer to give about them, you are not in a position to
pronounce upon the subject, and you had better be referred for six
months longer, as the medical examiners gracefully put it, to your
ethical, psychological, and biological studies. The great point about
the position in which Eliza and Lucy had placed themselves was simply
this. They stood full against the light, so that we could see right
through their translucent bodies, which were almost liquid to look
upon, and beautifully dappled with dark spots on a grey ground in a
very pretty and effective pattern. So favourable was the opportunity
for observation, indeed, that we could clearly make out with the naked
eye even the joints of their legs, the hairs on their tarsi--excuse the
phrase--and the very shape of their cruel tigerlike claws, as they
rushed forth upon their prey in a sort of carnivorous frenzy. At all
hours of the day we could notice exactly what they were doing or
suffering; and so familiar did we become with them individually and
personally, that before the end of the season we recognized in detail
all the differences of their characters almost as one might do with
cats or dogs, and spoke of them by their Christian names like old and
well-known acquaintances.
As the webs which Lucy and Eliza spun were several times broken or
mutilated during the year, either by accident or the gardener, we had
plenty of chances for seeing how they proceeded in making them. The
lines were in both cases stretched between a white rose-bush that
climbed up one side of the window, and a purple clematis that occupied
and draped the opposite mullion. But Lucy and Eliza didn't live in the
webs--those were only their snares or traps for prey; each of them had
in addition a private home or apartment of her own under shelter of a
rose-leaf at some distance from the treacherous geometrical structure.
The house itself consisted merely of a silken cell, built out from the
rose-leaf, and connected with the snare by a single stout cord of very
solid construction. On this cord the spider kept one foot--I had almost
said one hand--constantly fixed. She poised it lightly by her claws,
and whenever an insect got entangled in the web, a subtle electric
message, so to speak, seemed to run along the line to the ever-watchful
carnivore. In one short second Lucy or Eliza, as the case might be, had
darted out upon her quarry, and was tackling it might main, according
to the particular way its size and strength rendered then and there
advisable. The method of procedure, which I shall describe more fully
by-and-by, differed considerably from case to case, as these very large
and strong spiders have sometimes to deal with mere tiny midges, and
sometimes with extremely big and dangerous creatures, like bumble-bees,
wasps, and even hornets.
In building their webs, as in many other small points, Lucy and Eliza
showed from the first no inconsiderable personal differences. Lucy
began hers by spinning a long line from her spinnerets, and letting the
wind carry it wherever it would; while Eliza, more architectural in
character, preferred to take her lines personally from point to point,
and see herself to their proper fastening. In either case, however, the
first thing done was to stretch some eight or ten stout threads from
place to place on the outside of the future web, to act as _points
d'appuy_ for the remainder of the structure. To these outer threads,
which the spiders strengthened so as to bear a considerable strain by
doubling and trebling them, other thinner single threads were then
carried radially at irregular distances, like the spokes of a wheel,
from a point in the centre, where they were all made fast and connected
together. As soon as this radiating framework or scaffolding was
finished, like the woof on a loom, the industrious craftswoman started
at the middle, and began the task of putting in the cross-pieces or
weft which were to complete and bind together the circular pattern.
These she wove round and round in a continuous spiral, setting out at
the centre, and keeping on in ever-widening circlets, till she arrived
at last at the exterior or foundation threads. How she fastened these
cross-pieces to the ray-lines I could never quite make out, though I
often followed the work closely from inside through the pane of glass
with a platyscopic lens; for, strange to say, the spiders were not in
the least disturbed by being watched at their work, and never took the
slightest notice of anything that went on at the other side of the
window. My impression is, however, that she gummed them together,
letting them harden into one as they dried; for the thread itself is
always semi-liquid when first exuded.
The cross-pieces, we observed from the very beginning, were invariably
covered by little sparkling drops of something wet and beadlike, which
at first in our ignorance we took for dew; for until I began
systematically observing Lucy and Eliza, I will frankly confess I had
never paid any particular attention to the spider-kind with the
solitary exception of my old winter friends, the trap-door spiders of
the Mediterranean shores. But, after a little experience, we soon found
out that these pearly drops on the web were not dew at all, but a
sticky substance, akin, to that of the web, secreted by the animals
themselves from their own bodies. We also quickly discovered, coming to
the observation as we did with minds unbiased by previous knowledge,
that the viscid liquid in question was of the utmost importance to the
spiders in securing their prey, and that unfortunate insects were not
merely entangled but likewise gummed down or glued by it, like birds in
bird-lime or flies in treacle. So necessary is the sticky stuff,
indeed, to the success of the trap, that Lucy and Eliza used to renew
the entire set of cross-pieces in the web every morning, and thus
ensure from day to day a perfectly fresh supply of viscid fluid; but,
so far as I could see, they only renewed the rays and the
foundation-threads under stress of necessity, when the snare had been
so greatly injured by large insects struggling in it, or by the wind or
the gardener, as to render repairs absolutely unavoidable. The whole
structure, when complete, is so beautiful and wonderful a sight, with
its geometrical regularity and its beaded drops, that if it were
produced by a rare creature from Madagascar or the Cape, in the
insect-house at the Zoo, all the world, I'm convinced, would rush to
look at it as a nine-days' wonder. But since it's only the trap of the
common English garden spider, why, we all pass it by without deigning
even to glance at it.
At night my eight-legged friends slept always in their own homes or
nests under shelter of the rose-leaves. But during the day they
alternated between the nest and the centre of the web, which last
seemed to serve them as a convenient station where they waited for
their prey, standing head downward with legs wide spread on the rays,
on the look-out for incidents. Whether at the centre or in the nest,
however, they kept their feet constantly on the watch for any
disturbance on the webs; and the instant any unhappy little fly got
entangled in their meshes, the ever-watchful spider was out like a
flash of lightning, and down at once in full force upon that incautious
intruder. I was convinced after many observations that it is by touch
alone the spider recognizes the presence of prey in its web, and that
it hardly derives any indications worth speaking of from its numerous
little eyes, at least as regards the arrival of booty. If a very big
insect has got into the web, then a relatively large volume of
disturbance is propagated along the telegraphic wire that runs from the
snare to the house, or from the circumference to the centre; if a small
one, then a slight disturbance; and the spider rushes out accordingly,
either with an air of caution or of ferocious triumph.
Supposing the booty in hand was a tiny fly, then Lucy or Eliza would
jump upon it at once with that strange access of apparently personal
animosity with seems in some mysterious way a characteristic of all
hunting carnivorous animals. She would then carelessly wind a thread or
two about it, in a perfunctory way, bury her jaws in its body, and in
less than half a minute suck out its juices to the last drop, leaving
the empty shell unhurt, like a dry skeleton or the slough of a
dragon-fly larva. But when wasps or other large and dangerous insects
got entangled in the webs, the hunters proceeded with far greater
caution. Lucy, indeed, who was a decided coward, would stand and look
anxiously at the doubtful intruder for several seconds, feeling the web
with her claws, and running up and down in the most undecided manner,
as if in doubt whether or not to tackle the uncertain customer. But
Eliza, whose spirits always rose like Nelson's before the face of
danger, and whose motto seemed to be '_De l'audace, de l'audace, et
toujours de l'audace_,' would rush at the huge foe in a perfect
transport of wild fury, and go to work at once to enclose him in her
toils of triple silken cables. I always fancied, indeed, that Eliza was
in a thoroughly housewifely tantrum at seeing her nice new web so
ruthlessly torn and tattered by the unwelcome visitor, and that she
said to herself in her own language: 'Oh well, then, if you _will_ have
it, you _shall_ have it; so here goes for you.' And go for him she did,
with most unladylike ferocity. Indeed, Eliza's best friend, I must fain
admit, could never have said of her that she was a perfect lady.
The chawing-up of that wasp was a sight to behold. I have no great
sympathy with wasps--they have done me so many bad turns in my time
that I don't pretend to regard them as deserving of exceptional
pity--but I must say Eliza's way of going at them was unduly barbaric.
She treated them for all the world as if they were entirely devoid of a
nervous system. I wouldn't treat a _Saturday Reviewer_ myself as that
spider treated the wasps when once she was sure of them. She went at
them with a sort of angry, half-contemptuous dash, kept cautiously out
of the way of the protruded sting, began in most business-like fashion
at the head, and rolling the wasp round and round with her legs and
feelers, swathed him rapidly and effectually, with incredible speed, in
a dense network of web poured forth from her spinnerets. In less than
half a minute the astonished wasp, accustomed rather to act on the
offensive than the defensive, found himself helplessly enclosed in a
perfect coil of tangled silk, which confined him from head to sting
without the possibility of movement in any direction. The whole time
this had been going on the victim, struggling and writhing, had been
pushing out its sting and doing the very best it knew to deal the wily
Eliza a poisoned death-blow. But Eliza, taught by ancestral experience,
kept carefully out of the way; and the wasp felt itself finally twirled
round and round in those powerful hands, and tied about as to its wings
by a thousand-fold cable. Sometimes, after the wasp was secured, Eliza
even took the trouble to saw off the wings so as to prevent further
struggling and consequent damage to the precious web; but more often
she merely proceeded to eat it alive without further formality, still
avoiding its sting as long as the creature had a kick left in it, but
otherwise entirely ignoring its character as a sentient being in the
most inhuman fashion. And all the time, till the last drop of his blood
was sucked out, the wasp would continue viciously to stick out his
deadly sting, which the spider would still avoid with hereditary
cunning. It was a horrid sight--a duel _à outrance_ between two equally
hateful and poisonous opponents; a living commentary on the appalling
but o'er-true words of the poet, that 'Nature is one with rapine, a
harm no preacher can heal.' Though these were the occasions when one
sometimes felt as if the cup of Eliza's iniquities was really full, and
one must pass sentence at last, without respite or reprieve, upon that
life-long murderess.
One insect there was, however, before which even Eliza herself,
hardened wretch as she seemed, used to cower and shiver; and that was
the great black bumble-bee, the largest and most powerful of the
British bee-kind. When one of these dangerous monsters, a burly,
buzzing bourgeois, got entangled in her web, Eliza, shaking in her
shoes (I allow her those shoes by poetical licence) would retire in
high dudgeon to her inmost bower, and there would sit and sulk, in
visible bad temper, till the clumsy big thing, after many futile
efforts, had torn its way by main force out of the coils that
surrounded it. Then, the moment the telegraphic communication told her
the lines in the web were once more free, Eliza would sally forth again
with a smiling face--oh yes, I assure you, we could tell by her look
when she was smiling--and would repair afresh with cheerful alacrity
the damage done to her snare by the unwelcome visitor. Hummingbird
hawk-moths, on the other hand, though so big and quick, she would kill
immediately. As for Lucy, craven soul, she had so little sense of
proper pride and arachnid honour, that she shrank even from the wasps
which Eliza so bravely and unhesitatingly tackled; and more than once
we caught her in the very act of cutting them out entire, with the
whole piece of web in which they were immeshed, and letting them drop
on to the ground beneath, merely as a short way of getting rid of them
from her premises. I always rather despised Lucy. She hadn't even the
one redeeming virtue of most carnivorous or predatory races--an
insensate and almost automatic courage.
I need hardly say, however, that the spider does not kill her prey by a
mere fair-and-square bite alone. She has recourse to the art of the
Palmers and Brinvilliers. All spiders, as far as known, are provided
with poison-fangs in the jaws, which sometimes, as in the tarantula and
many other large tropical kinds, well known to me in Jamaica and
elsewhere, are sufficiently powerful to produce serious effects upon
man himself; while even much smaller spiders, like Eliza and Lucy, have
poison enough in their falces, as the jawlike organs are called, to
kill a good big insect, such as a wasp or a bumble-bee. These
channelled poison-glands, combined with their savage tigerlike claws,
make the spiders as a group extremely formidable and dominant
creatures, the analogues in their own smaller invertebrate world of the
serpents and wolves in the vertebrate creation.