no doubt one of the Lycosidæ, after ascertaining,
like the rest, that he was surrounded with
water on all sides, went up to the bottom of the
cup, and slowly pushed out a straight stiff thread
some five or six inches long, in a horizontal position.
He pushed the thread slowly out, as if to
give it time to stiffen. Still holding the thread
straightly and horizontally out, he turned his
abdomen to all the points of the compass, as if
searching for something to lay hold of, or feeling
for a breeze.

Spiders can do more than they have yet
received credit for. An observer, of whose
accuracy no one who knows him will entertain
a doubt, told me that he once saw a garden-
spider busy stretching his line from one shrub
or bush to another. The wind being rather
strong, the line oscillated more than the spider
approved, and he accordingly steadied it to
the ground by threads which he attached
between it and small pebbles lying beneath it
on the earth. This looks very like the sagacity
and shiftiness which, in man, is called
intelligence.

The tent of Clotho Durandii deserves special
mention among the specimens exemplifying the
ingenuity of spiders. This tent is formed at
first of two sheets of the finest taffeta, to which
the spider adds additional coverings when hatching
her eggs. The outside sheet is soiled to
conceal the tent; the inside is white, clean,
downy, and warm. When compelled to leave
her tent in search of food, this spider secures
the outside sheets with fastenings of which she
alone possesses the secret.

Spiders, mites, and scorpions, have little or
nothing in common except eight feet. There are
immense differences between the parasitic mites
and the flying or diving spider; and between the
demodex, found in the white matter squeezed
from the human nose, or detected in the wax of
the human ear, and the spider of the clay-tunnels,
or the scorpions of hot climes, with their sting-
bearing abdomens. Recent discoveries only bring
into greater relief, the incongruities of the
established classification. No mite was known to
inhabit the sea until Professor Allman
discovered one living as a parasite in the nostrils
of a seal. He called it the Halarachne. It has
no eyes, and has five thread-shaped feelers. It
reminds one of demodex, by the length of the
body and the proximity of the feet to the head.
Mr. Gosse has since discovered two very minute
species of mites, crawling about seaweed at
extreme low water. The Halacari of Gosse have
four legs in front and four behind. These marine
animals are grouped with the spider because
they have eight feet, although they do not
spin.

Scorpions have stings instead of spinnerets
in their abdomens. In their chief characteristics
they differ vastly from mites and spiders.
Scorpions suck the juices of their prey, pumping
them into the alimentary canal, by contracting
and relaxing the transverse muscles of the
phryngeal sac. If spiders preying upon
insects may be called entomologists, scorpions
may be called both arachnologists and
entomologists, for they hunt and kill both insects and
spiders. From the description of eye-witnesses,
it appears that large flies of the musca, or
house-fly genus, are seized with an irresistible
fury at the sight of the scorpion, which
compels them to fly at it again and again. The
scorpion remains on the wall, with its
lobster-like claw outstretched to receive the fly,
which, if so disposed, could easily escape. But,
mad with fury, the fly darts against the crust of
the scorpion, and rebounds from it with
astonishment. After wheeling around as if in flight
some two or three yards off, it stops and looks.
and is again impelled to charge with fury. This
unequal and fatal combat continues until the
stunned, confused, and furious, fly is caught in
the claws of the scorpion and eaten.

TO PARENTS.

GOING to and fro in the earth, and walking
up and down in it (like the Devil in Job), it has
sometimes occurred to me, that amidst the
universal preaching of the duties of children to
parents, a few words might well be said on the
duties of parents to children. Can these few
words do any harm? I trow not. The truth
never does any harm. No child, blessed with
even ordinarily good parents, will love and
honour them any the less for whatever may be
said against bad parents. And to try and
sustain the authority of the latter by false pretences
is as futile as setting up a fetish-idolatry instead
of the true religion of the heart—that instinctive
filial faith which is the foundation-stone of all
law and order in the world. Nay, in the universe,
for what would become of us in this weary
existence, if we could not from its beginning to its
ending, look up and say " Our Father"?

It is a solemn and terrible truth, that there
are parents who no more deserve the name
than the sovereign of Dahomey deserves to
be held as a " king, by the grace of God."
Yet in one sense the "divine right" of both
kings and parents is unalienable. "Honour
thy father and thy mother" is an absolute
law, given without reference to the worthiness
of the individual parent; it being a duty which
the child owes to himself, to honour his parents
simply as parents, without considering whether
or not they have fulfilled their duty. There is
a limit beyond which human nature cannot be
expected to go: when actual moral turpitude
renders " honour" a perfect farce; when respect
becomes a mockery, and obedience an impossibility.
But even then one resource remains—and
remains for ever—endurance and silence. The
unworthy parent must be treated like the unworthy
king, tacitly handed down from the position
which he has proved himself unfit to occupy,
neither injured nor insulted, simply deposed.

But these are exceptional cases, so
exceptional that each must be decided on its
separate merits; and in most instances the
outside public, which takes such delight in