It is somewhat strange that although, where other tribes of living creatures are concerned, I am something of a naturalist, spiders I have always observed and admired in a non-scientific spirit, and this must be my excuse for mentioning the habits of some spiders without giving their specific names--an omission always vexing to the severely-technical naturalist. They have ministered to the love of the beautiful, the grotesque, and the marvellous in me; but I have never _collected_ a spider, and if I wished to preserve one should not know how to do it. I have been "familiar with the face" of these monsters so long that I have even learnt to love them; and I believe that if Emerson rightly predicts that spiders are amongst the things to be expelled from earth by the perfected man of the future, then a great charm and element of interest will be lost to nature. Though loving them, I cannot, of course, feel the same degree of affection towards all the members of so various a family. The fairy gossamer, scarce seen, a creature of wind and sunshine; the gem-like Epeira in the centre of its Starry web; even the terrestrial Salticus, with its puma-like strategy, certainly appeal more to our aesthetic feelings than does the slow heavy Mygale, looking at a distance of twenty yards away, as he approaches you, like a gigantic cockroach mounted on stilts. The rash fury with which the female wolf-spider defends her young is very admirable; but the admiration she excites is mingled with other feelings when we remember that the brave mother proves to her consort a cruel and cannibal spouse.