if I might dare to offer advice, I would say that you ought to obey her.'

She did not even look at the pile of notes he had laid on the table. She had gone to the window, and was gazing out upon the dull gray street. There was no thoroughfare, and only an occasional cab or a tradesman's cart disturbed the residents.

When she turned to him again, the cold stolid look had gone. from her face, and the expression was one of such absolute anguish that Walton felt his heart sink. He would have been glad at that moment if she had been his sister Carry, so that he could have taken her in his arms and tried to comfort her. But she spoke steadily and calmly.

'You are very kind, Mr. Walton; forgive me for any unkindness I have shown to you. You took me by surprise, and-and I have not been very strong lately.'

He revived instantly, and interrupted her with something of his customary cheeriness.

'There is a train starts for Dunthorpe in an hour,' he said, looking at his watch; that gives us plenty of time. So, get ready and come along; it will make Polly happy and me too.'

'No,' she answered quietly. 'I shall not return to the Meadow.'

'Now, don't talk nonsense; you must get home.'

'I have no home, and I have told you that I cannot go back to Polly.'

He was perplexed, and then a bright idea occurred to him. 'Will you think over it until this time to-morrow, and then I will take your answer?'

'Very well; you can call to-morrow.'

All right.'

And they parted with every appearance of being good friends again.

(To be continued.)

405

Threads and Thrums in Lower Life.

BY DR. ANDREW WILSON.

DESPITE the polite attentions of the housemaid's broom and the avenging duster wielded by that enemy to dust and cobwebs, an indefatigable member of the spider-fraternity has been busily engaged in a snug corner of my room for some days past. Day by day some new phase or feature has been apparent in the work whereon Madame Arachne has been employing her energies and time. The ruthless duster has more than once despoiled the fabric which took two days' hard labour to rear; and to my certain knowledge the broom on one occasion has annihilated a structure the manufacture of which cost probably as much labour and ingenuity to devise, as did the production of that æsthetic coloured print in which the goddess of the duster is arrayed. But the household deities possess their own peculiar views concerning the selection of a legitimate site for a spider's dwelling-place. It is, in truth, questionable whether Arachne and her web would be accorded any place whatever on the face of the earth, were the notions and proclivities of our practical Lares and Penates consulted in the matter. Purpose, design, and use are paramount ideas in the mind accustomed to set things straight' in our homes and by our hearths; and flies in the matter of provisions and edibles, or spiders in the matter of cobwebs, naturally meet with scant ceremony from practical hands and hearts of non-zoological type. Even admitting that purposive design and a plain use of the Arachne-family, as well as a moral for the infant mind, are embodied in the well-known nursery rhyme detailing the results of a spider's invitation to a frivolous and unsuspecting fly, the web-makers are not regarded as well-favoured creatures on account of their rapacious propensities, and enmity to the buzzing nuisance of the household. Both insect and Arachnidan are assailed and assaulted by aid of the lethal broom and duster and by the seductive papier-mouche; and captor and captured thus meet with the stern and uncompromising fate which ofttimes environs the footsteps of lower as well as of higher existence.

Gazing at Madame Arachne's handiwork in the corner of the room, one's thoughts run off, if not exactly at a tangent, at least into byeways which lead to the shallows of philosophy, and occasionally into the depths of profound reflection likewise. Speculation becomes rife regarding the source, origin, and growth of the construc

tive powers and the trained faculties which decide the site and build the house of Arachne and Co., spinners and fabricators, of Britain and the South, East, and West generally--although, be it remarked, the branches of the firm which flourish in the South are more notable even than the representatives which carry on the business within the limits of the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland,' as the Free Kirk minister in the Hebrides denominated these realms. Then to such sage reflections succeed others not less profound perhaps, regarding the spiders' place in nature, and the nearest relatives of such mechanical persons,' as Rob Roy, to Bailie Nicol Jarvie's extreme disgust, termed the spinners and weavers of his day. And again one's thoughts speed sidewise to consider other makers and firms of threads and fabrics, dwelling some by land and some by sea. Finally comes the determination to afford some light, if not sweetness, in the matter of the spinners of lower life. And so, here ends this rambling introduction to a brief chronicle of spiders and spinners, of cobwebs and silken fabrics, and other materials, known as a rule only to the cunning and industrious few.

Once upon a time a Lydian purple-dyer had a beauteous daughter, Arachne by name, and she, so runs the legend, was a spinner of no mean powers. But vanity of her deft art was the fair Arachne's weakness, and she was led to challenge Minerva to a trial of skill in spinning. Such a challenge, coming even from a demigoddess, not to speak of a humble mortal, would have been rudeness enough; and resenting the liberty, Minerva is said to have changed the purple-dyer's daughter into a spider, in which guise, it is to be presumed, she would have scope and use for her weaving powers. Thus much for mythology, and by way of accounting for the zoologist's reasons for including the spider tribes and their near relatives the mites and scorpions under the common term Arachnida. In the popular zoology which grows with us from our earliest days a spider is, of course, an 'insect.' Zoologically, Arachne and her neighbours claim a rank of higher nature than that assigned to the bulk of the insect class; and it may be well, as facilitating our recognition of the personal history of the spinners in question, to glance at the head-marks of their race. A spider's head, to begin with an important region of its body, does not exist as a separate and distinct portion of its body, as in an insect, but is amalgamated with its chest. Like the insects, the spider and her neighbours possess legs, which are attached to the chest region alone, and which do not belong to the tail as in the nearly related lobsters and their relations. The tail or 'abdomen' of the spider is moreover unjointed, and in this latter respect differs from the

tails of the insect tribe; and whilst the latter possesses a pair of 'feelers '-technically termed 'antennæ '-springing from the head, the spider exhibits a total want of such appendages, although persons skilled in the science of comparisons (which the learned name 'homology') are prone to consider that the big jaws of a spider, carrying the poison-fangs, are in reality the altered feelers of the Arachnidan fraternity. Be this as it may, feelers are plainly wanting in the spinners and weavers; and another point of difference between the insects and the latter is found in the total absence of wings; although it is noteworthy that certain insects, by no means of lowly grade, in addition to others of plebeian and parasitic habits, want wings entirely. Nor must we neglect to note that the Arachnidans are the gainers in respect of legs, which invariably number eight. The veriest aristocrat of an insect never possesses more than six legs, at least when fully grown; for it is permissible neither from an æsthetic nor from a scientific point of view to take into account the fleshy stumps with which some insects, in the days of their infancy, and when appearing as the Epicurean caterpillars, are provided. In the matter of breathing as well, the Arachnidans bear off the palm in respect of their possessing certain peculiar bags placed in the sides of their bodies, filled with delicate folds or leaves, and named pulmonary or lung sacs. The insect breathes by a curious arrangement of air-tubes, branching everywhere throughout its body; so that the spider possesses a more localised and a better-defined breathing apparatus, although a close likeness to the features of the insect in this latter respect, that of breathing, may exist amongst Arachnidans themselves. Last of all, amongst characters in insects which spiders lack, we may place the compound eyes of the former. Our Arachnidans have simple eyes, consisting of a few -usually some half-dozen, or at most eight-specks scattered over the front part of the body; but they never possess the great masses of visual organs we familiarly see distending the sides of the head in the fly and other insects, and which constitute veritable wonders, upon which the entomologically-minded amongst us are never weary of expatiating in learned discourse.

So much for the personnel and distinguishing features of Arachne and her neighbours. A similar inquiry into the disposition and private character of the Arachnidan species would reveal much that was puzzling, and not a little that might prove inexplicable even in these days of ready theorising and explanatory speculation. Take as an example the domestic life of Madame Tegenaria domestica, as the lady-person domiciled in the corner of the room is named. There can exist no reasonable

doubt-indeed, there are no grounds whatever for doubting the statement-that Madame is thoroughly paramount, and that Mr. Tegenaria domestica, like not a few male animals inhabiting the highest spheres of society, is practically a nonentity, and might, without very great loss to Arachnidan society, be regarded as practically non-existent. The gentleman in question is rarely, if ever, seen within his domestic circle; and the difficulty connected with his movements and existence is that of ascertaining not merely when, but where he takes his walks abroad. The ladyspiders are, indeed, a race of viragos pure and simple. The most enthusiastic students of Arachnidan ways have never described those of the female sex as bland, and it is by no means a mythical or supposititious statement that the henpecked husbands are not merely frequently mauled in unmerciful fashion, but are actually devoured by their mates.' This is truly a horrible state of matters, but it is nevertheless true; and Arachnidan society appears tacitly to justify the extreme procedure last mentioned, and to regard the mysterious disappearance of a husband as an event which the lady most interested is entitled to regard with equanimity, if not as an utterly uninteresting proceeding. But if Madame Tegenaria and her blood relations are thus given to husband-slaughter in a wholesale way, it must not be imagined that the social feelings or affections are wholly unrepresented in Arachnidan society. There is a tacit agreement among the best friends and biographers of the race, that in the matter of affection for their progeny Mesdames Tegenariæ and friends are models of parents. The young appear to be tended and fed with scrupulous care, and the race before us presents thus a certain marked contrast to such cruel mothers as the queen bees which kill their daughters, and to the workers which kill the drones. The male spiders by all accounts are peripatetic and erratic in their ways, and wander about from nest to nest in a thoroughly Bohemian fashion. Statisticians inform us that the males as a rule preponderate in the Arachnidan race-an apparently wise provision, considering the frequency with which they are slaughtered by their mates. In one or two families, however, the female sex appears to predominate as in higher life, and Thorell, of Upsala, has left it on record that in his opinion the lady-spiders on the whole exceed their mates in numbers. Blackwall, in his work on the spiders, indicates that the males are darker-coloured, as a rule, than the females; but there are cases

1 De Geer, as quoted by Kirby and Spence, tells us that he has witnessed an unfortunate husband' seized by the object of his attentions, enveloped by her in a web, and then devoured; a sight which,' he adds, 'filled him with horror and indignation.'