But to enter here, upon a philosophical dissertation, respecting the nature and developments of instinct, is not my design, and I will now detain you with but one or two instances of it, which have fallen under my own observation. One warm day in the early spring, I observed a spider, very busily engaged upon a dirty old web, which had for a long time, curtained a pane of my factory window. Where Madame Arachne had kept herself during the winter, was not in my power to ascertain; but she was in a very good condition, plump, spry, and full of energy. The activity of her movements awakened my curiosity, and I watched with much interest the commotion in the old dwelling, or rather slaughter house, for I doubted not that many a green head and blue bottle had there met an untimely end. I soon found that madam was very laboriously engaged in that very necessary part of household exercises, called, CLEANING UP; and she had chosen precisely the season for her labors which all good housewives have by common consent appropriated to paint-cleaning, white-washing, &c. With much labor, and a prodigal expenditure of steps, she removed, one by one, the tiny bits of dirt, sand &c., &c., which had accumulated in this net during the winter; but it was not done, as I at first thought, by pushing and poking, and thrusting the intruders out, but by gradually destroying their _location_, as a western emigrant would say.--Whether this was done, as I at one time imagined, by devouring the fibre as she passed over it, or by winding it around some under part of her body, or whether she left it at the centre of the web, to which point she invariably returned after every peregrination to the outskirts, I could not satisfy myself. It was to me a cause of great marvel, and awakened my perceptive as well as reflective faculties from a long winter nap. To the first theory there was no objection, excepting that I had never heard of its being done; but then it might be so, and in this case I had discovered what had escaped the observation of all preceding naturalists. To the second there was this objection, that when I occasionally caught a front view of "my lady," she showed no distaff, upon which she might have re-wound her unravelled thread. The third suggestion was also objectionable, because, though the centre looked somewhat thicker, or I surmised that it did, yet it was not so much so as it must have been, had it been the depot of the whole concern.