One would never weary of dipping eagerly into these inexhaustible treasures. We imagine, for instance, that, from seeing cobwebs so frequently displayed in all manner of places, we possess adequate notions of the genius and methods of our familiar spiders. Far from it: the realities of scientific observation call for an entire volume crammed with revelations of which we had no conception. I will simply name, at random, the symmetrical arches of the Clotho Spider’s nest, the astonishing funicular flight of the young of our Garden Spider, the diving-bell of the Water Spider, the live telephone-wire which connects the web with the leg of the Cross Spider hidden in her parlour and informs her whether the vibration of her toils is due to the capture of a prey or a caprice of the wind. It is impossible, therefore, short of having unlimited space at one’s disposal, to do more than touch, as it were with the tip of the phrases, upon the miracles of maternal instinct, which, moreover, are confounded with those of the higher manufactures and form the bright centre of the insect’s psychology. One would, in the same way, require several chapters to convey a summary idea of the nuptial rites which constitute the quaintest and most fabulous episodes of these new Arabian Nights. The male of the Spanish Fly, for instance, begins by frenziedly beating his spouse with his abdomen and his feet, after which, with his arms crossed and quivering, he remains long in ecstasy. The newly-wedded Osmiae clap their mandibles terribly, as though it were a matter rather of devouring each other; on the other hand, the largest of our moths, the Great Peacock, who is the size of a bat, when drunk with love finds his mouth so completely atrophied that it becomes no more than a vague shadow. But nothing equals the marriage of the Green Grasshopper, of which I cannot speak here, for it is doubtful whether even Latin possesses the words needed to describe it seemingly.