_The Spider._--These two chapters are mainly the result of our own observations. We have profited, however, by several authorities; especially by the capital and classical work, the grand labour of Walckenaër,--which is of importance both for the description, classification, and moral history of the Spiders. Azara tells us that in Paraguay the natives spin the cocoon of a great orange-coloured spider fully an inch in diameter. Sir George Staunton, the English ambassador to China, in his "Travels in Java" (vol. i., p. 343) informs us that the epeiras of Asia weave such stout webs that they can only be cut with a sharp-edged instrument; at the Bermudas, their webs are capable of arresting the progress of a bird as big as a thrush (Richard Stafford, _Coll. Acad._, ii., p. 156). Doctor Lemercier, our learned bibliographer, has lent to me (from his personal collection) a rare and very clever _brochure_ by Quatrefages on the hygrometrical sensibility of spiders, on their prescience of variations of the temperature--which we might very well turn to advantage--and on the skilful exposure of their webs. The formation of their beautiful and poetical autumn-webs, which are called _Virgin's Threads_, is very clearly explained by Des Étang, in the _Mémoires de la Société Agricole de Troyes_, for 1839. In reference to the spider's most terrible enemy, the ichneumon, some curious details are given in the fourth volume of the _Memoirs_ of the American Society. In order to preserve it for its little ones, it does not kill its victim, but, if one may so speak, etherizes it by pricking it, and distilling into the wound a venom which apparently paralyzes it. My remarks on the terror of the male in his amorous advances are based upon those of De Geer, and Lepelletier, in the _Nouveau Bulletin de la Société Philomathique_, pt. 67, p. 257. Finally, the master-work of the spider, the ingeniously constructed house and door of the _Mygale_ of Corsica, has been completely described and drawn by an observer whom one can trust implicitly,--Audouin (followed by Walckenaër, and others). [Illustration] NOTE 12.-Book iii., Chap. i. _The Termites._--The beautiful illustrations of Smeathman would merit reproduction, and the translation of his book (ed. 1784), now very rarely met with, ought to be reprinted. The interesting additional details collected by Azara, Auguste, Saint-Hilaire, Castelneau, and others, might be added, so as to make a complete monograph. [Illustration] It is by no means a matter of slight import to recognize that the true and grand principle of art, so long misunderstood in the Middle Ages, has been always followed to the very letter by creatures of so low an order, in their surprising constructions. The fact I have related in reference to the subterranean mining of Valencia by the termites, will be found in Humboldt's "Travels in Equinoctial America."