such a ceremony, performed en masse, the
Pompes Funèbres could, perhaps, display a
taste and a luxury from the use of which, in
individual cases, it is debarred." This was
Monsieur Philibert's grand manner. There was no
harm in him, however. He was one of the
mildest and most placable of men. He was a
widower, and his wife had once kept a baby-linen
warehouse: what time, ere he himself had gone
into the undertaking business, Philibert had
not disdained to hold a senior clerkship in a
Bureau de Nourrices: an agency office for wet-
nurses.

SILK-SPINNING SPIDERS.

THE arachnida are not all spiders, or spinners,
and are not, indeed, the only or the principal
producers of silk. There are spiders, or arachnida
which cannot spin a thread, and there
are shell-fish, or mollusca, which spin cables.
When, after much reading, the simple-minded
reader gets into the meaning of the authors
of systems and classifications, he finds that
they often do not mean what they say; for
by spiders they do not mean all animals which
spin, and by arachnida they really intend nothing
more definite than the six-footed and the eight-
footed groups of animals.

Silk is formed of fibrine, the substance of
the fibres, with a coating of albumen, a layer of
gelatine, and some fat and colouring matter.
The chief spiders of silk are caterpillars.
Maggots, or larves, are the spinners which
clothe the fair sex of the hominal species in
silken attire. The attempts to make something
useful of the silk of the animals more
especially called spiders, have all ended hitherto in
nothing better than the production of curiosities.
Gloves and purses made of spider silk may
sometimes be seen in museums. But gloves
and purses are sold and bought in the cities of
the Mediterranean, which have been woven of
the silk spun by shell-fish of the pinna kind.
For that matter, I have seen a purse which was
knitted of the fibres of the mineral called
asbestos. The newspapers of Vienna, some years
back, mentioned that several pairs of excellent
silk stockings had been knitted of spider silk;
but the news, as the French say, awaits confirmation.
Spider silk has, however, it appears to
be established by sufficient testimony, been
successfully used as thread. A spider is found on
the island of St. Helena which is handsomely
marked, banded, and coloured, the fibres of the
egg-bag of which might be used as silk; and
the ladies of the Bermudas actually use the silk
of spiders for sewing purposes. The silk of a
spider common in the Bermudas, Epeira clavipes,
is so strong that it can be wound from the
insect itself like cotton from a reel. The webs
of this spider stretch ten feet across between
the cedar-trees, catching large insects and small
birds: a certain proof that their threads rival
cotton threads in strength. In reference to the
practical, industrial, and commercial question of
the utility of spider silk, it is an important fact
that their webs are strong enough to hold small
birds. When Madame Merian first published
this fact, it was stoutly denied by the stay-at-
home naturalists, the regular critics of travellers'
tales. Here is a specimen of the sort of
experiment upon the results of which the testimony
of observers is often gainsayed, and even
their veracity and good faith called in question.
Madame Merian having said there were spiders
which snared and devoured birds, a naturalist
wounded a humming-bird and offered it to a
mygale. But the mygale, instead of attacking
the bird, retreated from it with fear or aversion.
Confident in the result of his experiment,
the naturalist scouted the story of the bird-
eating spider! Yet it has been repeatedly
confirmed since, and never was improbable. M.
Moreau de Jonnès says that the South American
mygale climbs trees, to devour the young
humming-birds; and Mr. H. W. Bates saw in Brazil
two little finches entangled in the web of a grey-
brown mygale. The finches he judged to be
male and female; one was dead, and the other
was under the body of the hideous spider.
Threads strong enough to hold birds may well
be used for sewing purposes by ladies resident
in hot countries abounding in such spiders.
Even men of business have tried to turn spider
silk to practical account. " M. Bon, a Frenchman,
and M. Fremeyer, a Spaniard," says Mr.
Blackwell, " have succeeded in fabricating stockings,
gloves, purses, and other articles, of the
silk produced by spiders; but the great
voracity of these animals, and the difficulty
experienced in providing them with food, have
hitherto prevented this material from being
made available for manufacturing purposes on
an extensive scale." May it not be that the
authors of these experimental enterprises have
attempted too much? If it could be established
that spider silk makes good silk thread, much
would be gained for the use of mankind, although
the material might never be made available for
purses, gloves, or stockings. Curious
calculations have been made in reference to the
production, the relative production, of spider
and caterpillar silk. A spider, it is said, lays
six eggs for one egg laid by a moth, yet the
moth makes twelve times as much silk as the
spider. Two thousand three hundred and four
caterpillars make as much silk as twenty-seven
thousand six hundred and forty-eight spiders
of the house-spider species. The proportional
strength of the thread of the silk-moth and of
the thread of a house-spider is said to be five to
one in favour of the silk-moth. Spiders, more-
over, are shockingly addicted to eating each
other: a taste of which the silkworm is innocent.
Many six-footed animals make silk, and
only one species of them all has yet been
discovered suitable for the purposes of the silk
weaver—the silkworm of the mulberry-tree.
The experiments with all the numerous other
species have disappointed the sanguine hopes
entertained. When we remember how little
spiders have been hunted, collected, studied,