In Prescott’s ‘Conquest of Mexico’ we are told that, in 1520, when the Spaniards visited that country, the wandering sparks of the Elater, ‘seen in the darkness of the night, were converted by their excited imaginations into an army with matchlocks;’ and on another occasion these phosphorescent insects caused British troops to retreat: for when Sir John Cavendish and Sir Robert Dudley first landed in the West Indies, and saw at night an innumerable quantity of lights moving about, they fancied that the Spaniards were approaching with an overwhelming force, and hastily re-embarked before their imaginary foe. A creature, half of whose body is generally fixed to the other by a mere thread, whose soft skin is unable to resist the least pressure, and whose limbs are so loosely attached to the body as to be torn off by the slightest degree of force, would seem utterly incapable of protecting its own life and securing that of its progeny. Such, however, is the physical condition of the spiders, who would long since have been extirpated if Nature had not provided them with the power of secreting two liquids, the one a venom ejected by their mandibles, the other of a glutinous nature, transuded by papillæ at the end of their abdomen. These two liquids amply supply the want of all other weapons of attack or defence, and enable them to hold their own against a host of enemies. With the former they instantly paralyse insects much stronger and much more formidable in appearance than themselves; while with the latter they spin those threads which serve them in so many ways--to weave their wonderful webs, to traverse the air, to mount vertically, to drop uninjured, to construct the hard cocoons intended to protect their eggs against their numberless enemies, or to produce the soft down which is to preserve them from the cold. Preying on other insect tribes, which they attack with the ferocity of the tiger, or await in their snares with the patient artifice of the lynx, the spiders may naturally be expected to be most numerous in the torrid zone, where Nature has provided them with the greatest abundance and variety of food. There also, where so many beetles, flies, and moths attain a size unknown in temperate regions, we find the spiders growing to similar gigantic dimensions, and forming webs proportioned to the bulk of the victims which they are intended to ensnare. In some parts of Makalolo, Dr. Livingstone saw great numbers of a large beautiful yellow-spotted spider, the webs of which were about a yard in diameter. The lines on which these webs were spun, extended from one tree to another, and were as thick as coarse thread. The fibres radiated from a central point, where the insect waited for its prey. The webs were placed perpendicularly, and a common occurrence in walking was to get the face enveloped in them, as a lady is in a veil.