In previous chapters we have seen how spiders are preyed upon in a peculiar way, and for a special purpose, by various species of wasps, and how, in a more general manner, they fall victims to ants. There are spiders, however, who escape both wasps and ants, as well as other enemies, against which they are not strong enough to contend, not by running away, merely, or concealing themselves, which are ordinary methods, but by another plan not quite so common in nature, which some people think is only resorted to by ourselves. We, for instance, if we have committed a robbery or anything of that sort, and it is known that we did it, disguise ourselves like somebody else—it does not matter who—so as to get to Spain or America, or anywhere we think best, without being recognised. Or sometimes we do the disguising first, and get the money in that way, dressing up to resemble some person that we pretend to be, or someone in his or her class of life—the nobility mostly—and living in the way that they would do, so that we take people in right and left, and they trust us in a way that they would never think of doing if they knew that we were only poor, honest people who paid our way, and made no sort of dash or show. Now this is just what some animals, especially insects, do, only whereas we have to dress up for each occasion, and can assume different disguises, they are always disguised in the same way, and whereas we know what we are doing, and why we are doing it, they know nothing at all about it, which last gives them a great advantage, since even the finest acting does not quite come up to nature. Some creatures, in fact, are cheats all their lives through. Their “whole life is a lie,” as one of the characters in one of Scott’s novels said once, a long time ago, and as thousands of very different sorts of characters in very different kinds of novels, have been saying to or of one another or themselves—or words to that effect—ever since. And now for examples, which is the only way of getting to understand anything, unless it is very simple indeed. To begin with spiders. There are some that look exactly like ants, so that anyone seeing them for the first time would think that they were ants, and would only find out that they were not, but spiders, by degrees, and perhaps not at all if he were not something of an entomologist. Ants, like all other insects, have six legs, whereas spiders, which are not insects at all, have eight. But the spider, by holding up one of its anterior pair of legs, either the first or the second pair, and bending or pointing them to suit the kind of ant it resembles, makes them look like a pair of antennæ, springing not from its body but from the head. The head itself looks much more like an ant’s than a spider’s, and this is still more—or still more remarkably—the case with the body, which is lengthened in various degrees, and shaped in various ways, in accordance with that of the model on which the make-up is founded.