PERSEVERANCE OE THE SPIDER.

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with the predatory race notable, like herself, for love of off-spring. Herein the “wolf spider” does but image and emu-late the wolf.

Perseverance is another admirable trait for which the spideris eminently conspicuous. No one can deny it;—no one whohas ever watched a garden spider in the construction or thereparation of her geometric web, who has noticed her doublingand redoubling the lines by which her fabric is to hang sus-pended, testing repeatedly their power of support by suspen-sion from them of her own weight as she drops herself, nowhere, now there, from different portions of the thread. Seeher in coustruction of her woven wheel, measuring carefullyby her provided ruler—one of her own legs—each spoke orradius, and each circular mesh which interlaces them; andbehold, finally, after all is completed, so neat, and trim, andregular, how that when her cords are sundered by the strug-gles of some powerful captive—may be, by a Samson blue-bottle—she will set to work again so cleverly, so patiently, torepair her broken snare. No; not one of us who have seenher so employed can deny to the spider, apart from her en-trapping object, the meed of our admiration and our praise;the latter only a balance awarded in very- fairness asrainst theobloquy, unjust, extravagant, which has been heaped uponher by ungrateful man, in return for all her fly-catching ser-vices in his behalf. Amongst her revilers is La Fontaine,who, in one of his worst fables, “ La Goutte et l’Araiguee,”

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