"The poison apparatus of spiders," says the same author, "is precisely analogous to that of serpents, only it is of microscopic size. It possesses mobile teeth, hollow fangs which distil the poison into the wound, and this is secreted by a peculiar gland situated in the interior of the palpi attached to the under jaws which effect the bite. In the large tropical species this lethal fluid is so active that it kills in an instant animals of a far superior size, and is often employed against the birds which the spiders seize on the trees." The so-called Bird-eating Spider attacks the lovely humming-birds. It is called the Great Spider in South America, and its cocoon is three inches long and one broad. Thinking of the creatures of prey and their quarry is always a painful subject. Yet we know surely that the all-wise Creator would not order the balance of nature to be kept up in this way if it involved cruelty. There is cruelty in some of the methods of vivisection--in the horrible way, for instance, in which one French scientist at least has studied and tested by torture how far a poor loving mother dog will bear being maimed, before it can be induced to leave its offspring. And there is a brutality, as demoralising to the men who have to carry out their master's orders in felling oxen for the market, as it is torturing to the poor beasts. Nature's methods of killing are, as a rule, mercifully rapid. It seems to be a part of the Creator's plan that some of His creatures should live on the rest, and "some," says a thoughtful writer on God's providence, "have suggested that such a state of things implies a reflection upon the Divine goodness, ... but by the means now specified some classes of animals are held in check which would otherwise so multiply as to become an intolerable nuisance." And so we consider with complacence the fact that the cat kills the mouse, the owl catches up the field vole and the beetle; the swallow rids the air of insect pests which would render life intolerable, the ladybird lives on the aphides that devour our plants--those fat green insects which destroy our roses and honeysuckle. The spider does his own appointed work in a way which shows astute intelligence. Death is the common lot, and most of the creatures preyed on pass swiftly away in the full height of enjoyment without lingering sickness or decay. I have known a spider's web put to a very odd purpose by a lady I knew well in New Zealand, a very successful poultry rearer. When her chickens had "the pip," she declared that she cured them by a buttered pill consisting of spiders' webs. And I have known also Chinamen give dying men, as a last remedy, a tiny chicken pounded up in a mortar, bones, feathers, and all, and welded into a huge pill. They declared that it often cured when all else had failed. But this is a digression.