I suppose it argues a very empty plane of life, but these little creatures have an immense power of entertaining a person who spends day after day in the theatre of their activities. I am reminded that here in India one ought to have marvellous tales to tell of them, only Simla is not really India, but a little bit of England with an Adirondack climate and the “insect belt” of Central Asia; and things are not so wonderful here as you would think to look at us on the map. Scorpions and centipedes do come up from the plains and live in the cracks of the wall whence they crawl out to be despatched when the first fires are lighted, but they have not the venom of those below. Scorpions Atma will take hold of by the poison bags at the end of their tails, and hold up in the air dangling and waving their arms; and nobody even screams at a centipede. Millipedes which look much more ferocious but are really quite harmless often run like little express trains across your bath-room walls, and very large, black, garden spiders also come there to enjoy the damp. They enjoy the damp, but what they really like is to get into the muslin curtain over the window and curl up and die. The first time I saw one of them in the folds of the curtain I thought it would be more comfortable in the garden and approached it with caution and a towel, to put it out. Then I perceived from its behaviour--it did not try to run away, but just drew its legs a little closer under it, as you or I would do if we absolutely didn’t care what happened so long as we were left in peace--that it had come there on purpose, being aware of its approaching end. I decided that the last moments of even a spider should be respected, but every day I shook the curtain and he drew his legs together a little more feebly than the day before, until at last he dropped out, the shell of a spider, comfortably and completely dead. I admired his expiring, it was business-like and methodical, the thing he had next to do, and he was so intent upon it, not in any way to be disturbed or distracted, asking no question of the purposes of nature, simply carrying them out. One might moralize. Talking of spiders I have just seen a fly catch one. It was, of course, an ichneumon fly. One has many times heard of his habit of pouncing upon his racial enemy, puncturing and paralyzing him and finally carrying him off, walling him up and laying an egg in him, out of which comes a young ichneumon to feed upon his helpless vitals; but one does not often see the tragedy in the air. He held his fat prey quite firmly in his merciless jaws and he went with _entrain_, the villain! The victim spider and the assassin fly! One might moralize again.