The Pillar Karras work very hard for the money they receive for their services, and the contortion of their bodies and features when engaged in their The season in which fishing on the pearl-banks is conjurations or prayers is painful to witness. Fre-allowed only lasts six weeks, but in that time only quently, when a diver is killed by a shark, the priest about twenty-five days' work is performed by the employed to protect him from harm has to make divers. a sudden departure from the scene of his labors to avoid the vengeance of the lost man's companions, who pronounce him an impostor, incapable of commanding or exercising the power necessary for protecting them from the enemy they fear.

So great is the superstition of the pearl-divers, that each firmly believes his preservation from day to day is wholly owing to the labors of the priest. One of the divers of the boat to which I belonged They know that thousands of sharks are cruising the was an exception to this rule: a man who looked tropic seas where the occupation of pearl-diving is and talked somewhat differently from his companfollowed; they also know that this enemy to man ions, and who, with some of them, was a little inand everything else is ever hungry; and they re-clined to be quarrelsome. Uneven in disposition, quire no further exercise of reason to believe that the "shark-binders" have saved them from being devoured.

spired our Marawas with more confidence in the | Perth to the woods of Strathallan and Drummond power of the Pillar Karras to save them. Had the Castle, is spread out before you, but hidden. So shark selected another, our priest, in their opinion, having no scenery to engage your attention on this would have deserved some severe punishment; but, as the one who had been taken away was disliked, all were noisy in praise of the wonderful man who, at the distance of twenty miles from a shark, had not prevented it from getting a dinner.

Our business was followed until the 1st of April, the end of the season, without further loss of life, and with great success in procuring oysters. To all there had been some excitement, much amusement, and very good pay, yet none seemed to regret that the season was over.

The result of the speculation of the merchant who had employed us I never learned; for, before it was known in Colombo, I had sailed from that part of the world, delighted with the hope that I might never see it again.

SPIDERS.

"SPIDERS! What a subject for an article! Let us skip it, and get on to the next!" exclaims some one after reading the heading. But be in no hurry, my reader! Try to read this article. The subject is striking. In all creation there exists not a more remarkable set of beings than spiders. I will try to be brief in their story.

Let me venture to alter a word in the song of the Second Fairy, in the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and follow me, as the said Fairy calls,

"Weaving spiders! come ye here: Come, ye long-legged spinners, come!" Shakespeare, in these two lines, has touched with his master eye a leading peculiarity of the race. Spiders are weavers. Who has not wondered at

their webs?

2

3

Fig. 2. Eyes and mouth of Chelicera, greatly magnified. Fig. 3. Spinnerets, greatly magnified. autumn morning, the many pretty fungi springing up all around attract your notice. The whin and broom bushes are a mere mass of close webs. The sun is shining on these. At a distance they are seemingly gray and dull. You go near to examine them more closely, and to make acquaintance with their makers and tenants, and perhaps also to see what prey their webs contain.

As you look on them, the webs shine with the If an entomollustre of mother-of-pearl, or opal. ogist, you might fancy that the colors somewhat resemble the lovely hues that may be seen on the backs of some eastern beetles, found by Mr. Wallace. Naturalists like to be particular; and this last resemblance, at the time, occurred to me as being exact. The sheen of these webs, on the autumn morning of 1865 when I viewed them, exactly resembled at a short distance that on the back of a species of Weevil, of the genus Eupholus, brought from Celebes or some other Eastern island. As you approached more closely, the twinkling iridescence became more glorious. The rainbow hues glittered and glowed. Seldom had I seen anything more delicately beautiful; although the general impression was such as I had often witnessed in similar circumstances. This iridescence, however, did not entirely arise from the reflection of the sun on the dewy drops. I observed that the threads, on webs that appeared quite dry, glittered as my eye closely approached them.

A glance at any of our cuts will show that spiders have a body very different from that of insects, properly so called. They have their head and breast welded, as it were, into one piece,* while the body is in another piece, or division. To the first piece is attached that formidable apparatus, their mouth (Fig. 2); on its upper surface are generally six or eight eyes; the latter number prevailing, although one genus is said to have only two Fig. 1. Female Diadem eyes. To the under side are attached eight legs. The breathing apparatus of spiders, and indeed their general structure, from their palpi to their spinnerets, would take many papers to describe. Their very curious legs, with their combs, spines, and brushes, would alone furnish matter for columns. If the reader examine the cut (Fig. 3), he will These structures must only be alluded to incidentally find that each thread of a spider's web is formed by in this paper. The figures will show parts of these the combination of many threads from their spinin sufficient detail to point out the curious arrange- nerets, so that each thread has lines throughout its ment of eyes, claws, and spinnerets, at least in two length, which can cause the light of the sun, reflectof the genera. But let us glance at the webs of spi-ed to the eye, to show the prismatic colors. But ders for an instant.

Spider.

Sir David Brewster has described this, and gives Sir John Herschel's explanation of it. "These colors," says he, "may arise either from the cause that produces color in a single scratch or fissure, or the interference of light reflected from its opposite edges, or from the thread itself, as spun by the animal, consisting of several agglutinated together, and thus presenting, not a cylindrical, but a furrowed surface."

whether this be the explanation or not, I had never Come with me to that well-known point in Strath-seen a more fairy-like vision. William Blake or earn, called Whitehill, on an autumn morning. The sun is breaking through the mist which conceals the lovely prospect all around. The view of the country, from the Ochils to the Grampians, from "fair"

* Naturalists call it cephalo-thorax.

Noel Paton could have peopled it with fairies. The glittering webs would have become the magic carpet of the "little people" whom a gifted fancy might have conjured up.

• Encyclopædia Britannica, 8th ed., xvi. p. 622 (Optics).

Every Saturday,
March 17, 186.]

SPIDERS.

I was on my way to examine for a second time the curious library of Lord Maderty at Innerpeffray, where are many books that belonged to the great Marquis of Montrose. I walked on, leaving the webs to entrap the flies, and the spiders to pounce on them from their secret recesses, while those gifted with fancy, like Shakespeare, might see or imagine what they chose. Any spider's web is well worth Whoever cares to look at them examination. will soon find that there are many different kinds of these very curiously fabricated net-like or woven webs. Some are close and dense; some loose and irregular: a perfect maze of lines. Many are geometric and concentrical. All are wonderfully and most skilfully constructed. Some have long tubes connected with them; others are only tubes. Several of the foreign kinds, as we shall see, have regular trap-doors.

eggs.

The habits of spiders are as various as their forms. Some spiders are essentially wanderers, regular vagabonds indeed! Naturalists in their books even call the Wolf spiders Vagabondæ. These Wolf spiders in summer and autumn may be seen wandering over fields or heaths, generally carrying their bag of eggs with them. The specimens you meet with are chiefly females. They are most careful of their These eggs are enveloped precious charge of in a cocoon, which is attached to the spinners by means of short threads of silk; on a summer or autumn day, one when walking can scarcely fail to see on a heath or in a garden, a specimen of some species of Wolf spider carrying this precious burden. If my memory does not deceive me, Pollok, the author of "The Course of Time," has referred to it in his delightful story of the persecutions, "Helen of the Glen." He had often seen a spider of this kind (Lycosa) on the hills and heaths of Renfrewshire and Ayrshire, and he introduces it as a characteristic object of the scene.

A

Many of the Crab spiders have such an arrangement of the legs that they can move backwards, forwards, or to the sides, with equal readiness. slight search under stones or round their edges, such stones, especially, as are slightly imbedded in the ground or among grass, — will be sure to reward you with one or more species of this genus. In the valley above lovely Dunira in Perthshire I found a pretty species of the group (Thomisus), and witnessed its peculiar motions with renewed pleasure.

But, see! what little black spider is this on a sunny wall! How prettily spotted and banded he is with white! He stops, then goes on again, and stops, as if with these clear eyes of his he saw some ogre ready to arrest him. No doubt he has seen you, and tries to make you believe that he is only a black dot of a lichen on the wall. Do not look at him too closely, and you will soon see him, as Mr. Black wall describes him, "moving with great circumspection, and occasionally elevating his front half or 'cephalo-thorax,' by straightening the anterior legs, for the purpose of extending his sphere of

vision.

Fig. 4. Claws at the end of foreleg of Epeira Aurelia. Fig. 5. Claws at the end of foreleg of Philodromus Clerckii. always before we leap. We have not, like the spider, a cord to attach us to our places. Figs. 6 and 7 exhibit the form of a species of Salticus, and the peculiar arrangement of the eyes.

It would take a long treatise to enter into details of the manners of wandering spiders, or to describe the Vaulters, the Jumpers, the Crawlers, and the Pouncers. There are many varieties of them. Reference must be shortly made to a sedentary race, who spread a net for the wings and feet of their enemies.

6

7

titus, magnified.

Fig. 6. Salticus quinquepar-
Fig. 7. Eyes of above.

These spiders are the commonest of our garden spiders, the spider which constructs the geometric web. These "symmetrical snares," as our great spider lover, Mr. Blackwall, calls them, are described distinctly by him in words which sound somewhat "Johnsonían," but for which it would be difficult to substitute anything more short, simple, or clear. "They consist," he writes, " of an elastic spiral line thickly studded with minute globules of liquid gum, whose circumvolutions, falling within the same plane, are crossed by radii converging towards a common centre, which is immediately surrounded by several circumvolutions of a short spiral line devoid of viscid globules, forming a station from which the toils may be superintended by their owner without the inconvenience of being entangled in them. Examine the strong movable spire near the end of the last joint of each hind leg in this spider, By the contraction of and you will find that they are of great use in the economy of the creature." the flexor muscles," I again quote Mr. Blackwall, they are drawn towards the foot, and are thus " brought into direct opposition to the claws, by which means the animals are enabled to hold with a firm grasp such lines as they have occasion to draw from the spinners with the feet of the hind legs, and such also as they design to attach themselves to."

He runs with ease on the most perpendicular surface, for he has an apparatus below his toes by which he can take firm hold (Fig. 4). Look how he jumps on his prey, some little fly or other insect! He drew a line of silk from the spinners while in the very act of springing, and from the very point whence he vaulted. So that our friend, Salticus scenicus, has well earned his name Salticus, the leaper. If he has lost the object he jumped at, he has not lost his hold of the ground. It would be well for us to look and 1864, p. 323.

See his noble contribution to British Zoology, The Spiders of Great Britain and Ireland, published by the Ray Society in 1861

How true is Shakespeare's epithet, applied to The top of this tube, where it was flush with the Cardinal Wolsey in "King Henry VIII.":

"Spider-like,

Out of his self-drawing web, he gives us note,
The force of his own merit makes his way."
Act I., Scene 1.

ground, had a door so constructed as to close, or
rather to fall down, after the tenant had quitted it
on some foraging excursion
(Fig. 9). It was thinnest
at the hinge, and gradu-
ally thickened, and became

heavier towards the outer

edge. It is described as a

The assiduity, the patient working and watching of spiders are most noteworthy traits. The story of Robert the Bruce and the spider- and there seems to be little doubt of its truth is even classi-curious sight, to see the spical. The perseverance of a spider to fix its line, der suddenly escaping down notwithstanding many failures, attracted the attention of the Scottish King, and stimulated his courage in very adverse circumstances.

Watch the sudden issue of the spider from her recess when a fly is entangled in her web, and how soon she can secure her prey beyond possibility of escape!

this silken tube.

I know

he can hold down the door
with his feet, so that it re-
quires some force to raise
it. The spider had actually

holes on the under side of
the lid, into which he must Fig. 9. Its nest. Figures
have placed his legs to re-

sist

much reduced.

But let me just allude to a fact mentioned by Mr. Blackwall, with regard to the web of Epeira apoany attempt at opening it. In the British Muclisa. He says that upwards of 120,000 viscid glob-seum, we had two or three different specimens, ules are distributed upon the elastic spiral line in which showed that, like a cunning workman, the a net of large dimensions, and that yet under favor- trap-door spider could make a second door, when able circumstances the time required for its com- and had come out unexpectedly at the other side. he had worked his way through the angle of a bank pletion seldom exceeds forty minutes! There is wonderful weaver! Why, it beats any spinning- Another spider of this group had evidently added jenny in the world, and yet the constructor is only above the other. The fact was, some débris had a piece to his nest, and constructed a second door a simple spider. Truly has the poet written, —

"The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!"

a

In the month of May or June you may see against palings, or on the posts of a garden door, a little agglomerated mass, -a ball of yellow points. Touch it, and down drop the little creatures from the loose web amidst which the little yellow ball was hung. These yellow balls are spiders just hatched. Their mother carefully enclosed them in a silken cocoon, and now warm spring has brought them out.

fallen on the other door, and covered it up for an inch or so. Like a clever engineer, he had tunnelled through this, and to save trouble had left the old gate outside his work.

Had I space, I would be tempted to describe the great Mygales of the tropics, one of which, named by a naturalist Mygale Emilia, is most beautifully colored. Another, almost as finely colored, is named M. Zebra. Some of the Mygales, as Mr. Bates has seen them, can certainly destroy birds. I have seen a live Mygale tear a large cockroach to pieces in double-quick time.

How they drop, carefully suspended by their thread! The black spot on their abdomen sets off the yellow very nicely. If you look nearer, you A remarkable power that some, indeed many, will find a few members of the nest with a go-ahead spiders possess, is that of making themselves invisi tendency, like a Scot or a Saxon Yankee, com- ble. Any one may test this for himself. It has mencing business for themselves, spinning very been described in so lively and admirable a way, passable geometric webs, rather too near for savage by an author I had the privilege of knowing, that nature to tolerate when size has developed their my readers will be sure to prefer his description to powers. Pretty innocents! their strength is in com- any that I could produce. Hugh Miller, when a bination. Midges are their prey, not blow-flies or boy, observed the habits of insects and spiders on buzzing Volucellæ,-light filmny flies, juicy enough Cromarty hill and its woods. He writes: "The for their baby fangs, and with no struggle in their large Diadem Spider, which spins so strong a web wings or legs. I have often noticed this species; it that, in pressing my way through the furze thickets, is one of the Epeira. Space warns me, however, I could hear its white silken cords crack as they that this is a paper and not a book on spiders. How yielded before me, and which I found skilled, like wonderful, again, is the bell of the water-spider! an ancient magician, in the strange art of rendering and how clever the constructor of that rare produc- itself invisible in the clearest light, was an especial tion! Read Professor Bell's observations on the favorite; though its great size, and the wild stories habits of the Argyroneta, or water-spider, and if I had read about the bite of its congener, the Te you have an aquarium you may test them for your-rantula, made me cultivate its acquaintance someself.

what at a distance.

But I must conclude this too brief notice of the "Often, however, have I stood beside its large habits of spiders with web, when the creature occupied its place in the a mere allusion to the centre, and, touching it with a withered grass-stalk, trap-door spider (Fig. I have seen it suddenly swing on the lines with its 8). There are many bands,' and then shake them with a motion so rapid, species of these; I have that, like Carathis, the mother of the Caliph Vathek, seen only one alive. It who, when her hour of doom had come, glanced was brought from Al-off in a rapid whirl, which rendered her invisible, geria. The nest was the eye failed to see either web or insect for min constructed in a clay utes together. Nothing appeals more powerfully to bank, excavated by the youthful fancy than those coats, rings, and anthe cunning Cleniza or Actinopus. The tube, ex- ulets of Eastern lore, that conferred on their posseScavated to some depth, was lined with a dense web. sors the gift of invisibility; and I deemed it a great

Fig. 8. Trap-door Spider.

matter to have discovered for myself, in living na-picture of "The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania," ture, a creature actually pessessed of an amulet of having every authority in Shakespeare's page for this kind, that when danger threatened, could rush doing so. into invisibility."*

To Gossamer Spiders, those most ancient of aeronauts, and to Tarantule, exaggerated accounts of the effects of whose bites are given in most popular natural histories, I can only allude in passing. The wonderful forms of spiders, especially of some of the exotic Epeiride, whose bodies are covered or ornamented with spines and warts, may be seen in museums. The brilliant colors of some Salitci and species of Eresus, are very striking and remarkable. But to these and other things belonging to the history of spiders, an allusion must suffice.

The use of the threads of their cocoons by the optician would form an interesting subject. The micrometers, constructed for the astronomer and microscopist, have spiders' threads for their most essential parts. The finest lines yet obtained are those of a spider's thread.

See that little imp on the side of the terminus of the statue of Pan; how aghast he looks at the great female spider who has left her fine concentric web over the fox-glove. Notice how the male Epeira is left on the web, in vain seeking for his mate who has wandered away. In the same picture he has introduced the tube of another British Spider, the Agelena labyrinthica, on the under side of a mosscovered stone. See how its tenant and maker drags in the Ichneumon fly through the entrance, covered with the wings and other remains of older captures.

With a quotation from a letter of the poet Keats* to his friend Reynolds, I must close this paper. He writes, "The points of leaves and twigs on which the spider begins her work are few, and she fills the air with a beautiful circuiting. Man should be content with as few points to tip with the fine web of his soul, and weave a tapestry empyrean, full of symSpiders' webs have also other uses, such as stanch-bols for his spiritual eye, of softness for his spiritual ing the flow of blood, and even making pills. Mrs. touch, of space for his wanderings, of distinctness Colin Mackenzie says, "After a very pleasant sum- for his luxury." mer and rainy season at Chikaldah, I was attacked with Birar fever at the beginning of November, 1851, and continued for a year, having one or two attacks every month; after some time it became a As every art has its technicalities, so we suppose regular intermittent fever, but set quinine at defi- that "to pot" is to be accepted as the verb which ance. Cobweb pills, made of common cobwebs, and expresses the act of making pottery, as well as the taken in doses of ten grains three times a day, not act of planting flowers in the pottery thus made. only stopped it, but greatly improved my general To any other criticism Mr. Binns would probably health, though they did not prevent my being reply, that so the word is used in the Worcester ordered to Europe. They have been given with manufactory of pottery, of which he is now a manwonderful success in Labuan, and recently at Elich-aging director, and whose rise and fortunes he has pur, in the hospitals." Those skilful architects, the smaller British birds, often use spiders' webs and lines too in their beautifully constructed nests.

A CENTURY OF POTTING.†

personages who have gone over Messrs. Chamberlain's works, and given highly satisfactory orders for breakfast and dinner services.

here laboriously chronicled. It cannot be said that his book is very exciting or extremely interesting, or even strikingly valuable as a contribution to local The web of the spider has at times afforded to the history or the history of arts and manufactures. To artist something to help him in illustrating his story. the world in general it is not important to study the I need not refer to the wonderfully minute copies of trade-marks and signatures of a series of successful groups of flowers and insects in which some of the china-makers, the names, dates, and squabbles of Dutch painters excelled, although spiders and their rival establishments, the business advertisements webs are occasionally introduced. In this place I of old Worcester newspapers, or the entries in the may, however, allude to the introduction of Arach- visiting books, which chronicle in all the glory of ne, or her web, by two British artists, William Ho-impressive capitals the visits of the royal and noble garth and Noel Paton, R. S. A. In the fifth picture and plate of the "Rake's Progress," that in which the hero goes through the marriage ceremony with an antiquated dame, in the old church of St. Maryle-bone, Hogarth has very cleverly introduced a dusty cobweb over the lid of the poor's box, a convincing proof that not even the widow's mite had for some time disturbed its repose. In the original drawings to illustrate the "Ancient Mariner," Mr. Noel Paton has very admirably given, in three of them, bits of spiders' webs on the ropes and woodwork of the becalmed ship. In the fine engraving by - money; though we may not feel disposed to read Mr. Ryall, of the touching picture called "Home," the bill at full length, as here preserved for the inyou may s e on the rafters webs of the House Spi-struction of posterity. It is enough to know that der hanging over that feeling group, as mother and the sum total of the cost amounted to more than wife welcome home the Crimean soldier. These £4,000. Mr. Binns does not tell us whether the bill webs and spiders' works are introduced in the most was ever paid, but, if not, the manufacturer made a natural and unobtrusive way. When observed, they good profit out of the transaction, for it became at strike you as being a true, though a very feeble part once the fashion for the gay world to possess services of the scene depicted. Mr. Noel Paton has a keen of the same execrable pattern as that which pleased eye for ob ects of nature, and a rare power of draw-the Regent himself. Bad as the pattern is, however, ing and painting them as accessories. He has ably it is not nearly so abominable (judging from the sinintroduced the story of two spiders into his great

My Schools and Schoolmasters, p. 64.

Life in the Mission, the Camp, and the Zenana; or, Six Years in India, quoted in Literary Gazette, Sept. 17, 1853.

Nor do we much care to learn what extremely bad verses were printed in the Worcester Journal in the year 1757, “on seeing an armed bust of the King of Prussia curiously imprinted on a porcelain cup of the Worcester manufacture." The record of the Regent's order for a vast dinner, dessert, and breakfast service is slightly more interesting, as showing how that excellent Prince got rid of his

or rather our

Given in Lord Houghton's Life and Letters, Vol. I. p. 88. A Century of Potting in the City of Worcester, being the History of the Royal Porcelain Works from 1751 to 1851. By R. W. Binns, F.S.A. London: Quaritch. 1865.