of his weight. You see as we touch with this straw the outer bounding line and the long ropes, more than a yard in length, which strengthen the whole fabric, and fasten it to the wall on one side and the rose-tree on the other, that we do not disturb him; at least he takes no notice. Observe, too, that the straw comes readily away from these straight lines; you may touch any of the radii in any part without injuring the web; but if we touch either of the spiral lines, it adheres to the straw, and the web is rent in withdrawing it. There! the experiment has disturbed the spinner; he apprehends danger, and is making off; he is not, however, much frightened, and merely shelters himself in the cavity of a curled leaf until we shall have passed on, when he will come back again.

But come this way! here we are just in time to witness a battle-royal; but it will be one of cunning and confidence against rashness and despair. An overgorged flesh-fly is caught by the shoulder of one wing, in the viscid and elastic web which a crafty spinner has carried, by the aid of a projecting twig, above the level of the garden wall. He is thrashing away with all his might, agitating the vine-leaves to which the net is fastened, and has already rent away several square inches of the snare. Master Spinner, however, is darting round him in every direction, with the rapidity of an arrow, and with an agility of which you would not have thought his heavy body capable. Now the thrashing noise is hushed; that frantic wing which occasioned it is bound down with a dozen invisible threads strong as death, and veritable bands of fate to the luckless captive. Still he does not give it up; but struggles manfully with his legs and with convulsive throes of his body, that threaten to shake the web to pieces. Mr. Spinner now runs to the other side of his net, and confronts the kicking legs. He knows well enough what to do with them. A few turns backward and forward, and the recalcitrant members are fixed as firmly in the stocks as if a parish beadle had been employed for the purpose. The struggles of the poor captive are reduced now to a series of agonizing throes and heavings with his body, expressive of the horrible anticipation of his fast-impending fate. The executioner, however, soon relieves him from his despairing agonies. Placing himself

face to face with the pinioned victim, and in a manner embracing him, as it were, with his fatal arms, he plunges the sharp fangs of his murderous mouth into his breast, and sucks the life-blood from his quivering body. But all, be it remarked, is by no means over; it is now between nine and ten in the morning; the slaughtering spinner has insnared and subdued his victim, and has settled himself down to the enjoyment of a feast which will endure the best part of the live-long day. If you come again at four or five o'clock in the afternoon, it is ten to one but you will find him sucking away at the shrunken and exhausted carcass. So soon as it is drained dry, and no longer of any use to the spider, he will sever the confining threads, and the first breath of wind that blows will clear his web of the empty shell.

Let us leave him to his enjoyment, which, sanguinary as it is, it is not clear that we have any right to disturb, and pay a little attention to the operations of his neighbor, Spinner No. 2, who happens to be overloaded with business, having to attend upon two customers at once. A lively blue-bottle and a common house-fly have both blundered into the snare together. Mr. Spinner, who does business very much upon the system prevalent in human establishments, attends first upon the personage of most importance. The blustering bluebottle, always a noisy and pretentious fellow, and now in a state of especial fury, is speedily reduced to the rules of good behavior by the delicate restraints which Mr. Spinner knows so well how to administer. Being well swaddled up, like a kicking baby after a cold bath, he is left for a few minutes to plunge about as he best can, while Spinner turns his attention to the house-fly, who, being a customer in a much smaller way, is not honored by any very protracted ceremony. It is not worth while to waste any of his valuable web upon a victim who has not strength to resist; so he takes him at once in his arms, just as we have sometimes seen a very small child take a very big pitcher in both hands to drink from it, and drains him dry with a few sucks. Having thus whetted his appetite, he is off again to the blue-bottle, to whose mortal struggles he puts a speedy end, secundum artem.

The next member of this prosperous company with whom we have to deal is

But we pass on to another member of the firm, who has got a job in hand for which it is pretty plain-though he is the biggest we have seen yet-that he has no

"If man's convenience, health, Or safety, interfere, his rights and claims Are paramount and must extinguish theirs."

There! that's as good as "crowner's quest law," and we shall proceed to enforce it; but seeing that it is doubtful whether, under present circumstances, the bard, who had a tender heart, would have doomed the intruder to death, we shall give him the benefit of the doubt, and content ourselves with watching how he will behave himself when his handiwork | is destroyed. Presto! with a couple of whirls of our walking-stick the whole wondrous web has disappeared, being wound round the top of it. Quick as thought, poor Spinner, struck with mortal fear, has swung himself down to the ground, and showing four fair pairs of heels, is scuttling, straddling, and scrambling away as fast as he can get over the ground. But now mark the marvelous sagacity of the creature he seems to know that his liberal display of long legs in helter-skelter motion is more likely to attract attention, which may be death to him, than no motion at all. He seems to know, too-in fact he does know, there is no doubt of itthat he is himself of a dark brown, almost a black color, while the gravel upon which he has alighted is nearer to a light yellow. What does he do? Look at him! he scampers by the nearest possible route off the light-colored gravel to the little fringe of brown mold beneath the boxborder; and then suddenly drawing in and concealing every one of his long legs as effectually as if he had pocketed them, he throws himself upon his back, and simulates a small pebble or lump of mold so perfectly, that you would never dream that he was anything else, if you had not watched the maneuver. Let him alone, however, and he will turn to his feet before long, and steal off, all the wiser for his experience, and construct a new snare in a safer place.

upon the boundary-line of his web, under a rose-leaf, watching the devastation of his labors without moving a finger to prevent it? Ha, ha! he has caught a Tartar. A poor, half-starved, half-frozen, miserable outcast of a wasp has wandered unconsciously into the trap, and Mr. Spinner, for divers good and sufficient reasons, declines to welcome the unwished-for guest. Some how or other, he does not relish the look of him; perhaps he smells daggers, and knows that marauder wasp wears a weapon; at any rate, he gives him a wide berth, and looks quietly on while one strand after another of his filmy edifice is rent away, and the whole is going fast into ruin. Whiz! the wasp is off at last, and away with him flies the best half of the interior portion of the web, leaving a wreck of broken ropes dangling in the air, which will furnish employment for Mr. Spinner for the next hour in repairing them.

The next web that we come to appears to be deserted by its owner; but on a careful search we discover him comfortably sheltered in one of the leaves of the vine, which he has transformed by means of some hundreds of cables judiciously applied into a neat penthouse impervious to the rain, having drawn the edges of the leaf together, and bound them down in the shape of a green funnel closed at one end, the other opening toward his snare. There he is inside clasping in his deadly arms a poor lady-bird who never got into his web, but whom he doubtless hunted down in foray among the vine-leaves. But look here! Here is a spectacle far more remarkable. Another of these cormorant garden-spinners has abandoned his web for a time; and, at a distance of nearly a foot from it, is standing upon the level arena of a broad leaf, measuring with his eye the thews and sinews of a hunting-spider quite as large as himself, with the exception of his unwieldy belly. The hunter, a lean, savage, and active fellow, is determined upon the attack. He flies at his breast with the rapidity of a shot, and retreats again as rapidly, having perhaps inflicted a slight scratch or wound. He repeats the attack a dozen times, and a dozen times escapes

the spinner's attempt to grapple him. Spinner, not apparently relishing these repeated thrusts, draws in his legs, and, reared on end, presents them, woven into a kind of basket-work, as a shield to the assaults of the enemy; at the same time he counterfeits fear, and retreats a full inch nearer to his web. The hunter, too, takes up new ground, and renews his attacks with greater audacity, wearying himself with fruitless headlong assaults. At length he pauses for a moment to take breath. Now is the spinner's opportunity; he plunges upon him with out-stretched arms; the other rears up to receive him; their sixteen hairy limbs are locked fast in the death-struggle,-kicking, biting, twisting, writhing, and plunging, over and over, it seems for a few minutes doubtful as to which is the better man; but the web of the spinner-like the net of the gladiator in the circus of old Romedecides the battle. You can see a complete cloud of thin gauze-like threads issuing from Spinner's ropery, in which the poor hunter becomes soon so completely wrapped up that his struggles are no longer discernible. The battle is over; and the victor taking his prey, in the shape of a gray bundle almost as big as himself in his arms, hurries with it to the center of his web, and, like a greedy cannibal as he is, addresses himself at once to the feast of blood.

We can notice but the doings of one more member of this celebrated firm. He, beyond all the others, is most fortunate this morning, having just made a grand catch of a monster daddy-longlegs, which we should imagine is of all fish the biggest that comes to the spider's net. Further, he is a sort of insect whom having once caught, there is no danger of losing again. There are many of the larger insects which, like the flesh-fly and the bluebottle, would burst away from the spider's snare in a very few seconds, were it not for the toils which are instantly wound round them by the watchful hunter. Not so with the crane-fly or father-longlegs: the more he kicks and plunges about with his unwieldy shanks, and flusters with his gauzelike wings, the deeper he gets into it, and the less chance there is of his escape. Mr. Spinner still does not neglect him on that account; but he sets about his business with more deliberation, and with far more appearance at least of system, than

strikes us in his dealings with the others. You observe that he walks round him at a considerable distance; and, if you watch him closely, you will see that the long legs of the struggling creature become bound down one at a time, parallel with and close to his writhing body, until the whole six are thus securely bestowed. The wings are fast glued to the viscid cross-lines of the web. The poor wretch still twists and turns his long trunk in the toils; and all the while the spider is wrapping it up in a shroud of web-work, until it is as completely covered as was ever the mummy of Cheops in the great Egyptian pyramid. Not till the whole of this business is carefully performed, and poor daddy, buried alive, has assumed the aspect of a chrysalis in his silken cocoon, does the spinner pause in his work, or deign to inflict the deadly wound.

The garden-spiders rarely build their snares very high; a distance of from three to five feet above the ground seems to be their average range, though occasionally they are met with much higher. This precaution is perhaps taken on account of the birds. Be this as it may, we have seen a hungry cock-robin dart at a fly while the spider was dealing with him, and carry him off with spinner dangling below. It is curious that, though the garden-spider devours gnats, there is a larger species of fly which, though it often becomes entangled in his web, he never touches, but leaves to struggle out of it if he can, or to die of starvation if he cannot; we have watched them, and have known them for days together in the snare, and have often released them alive without disturbing the spider from his lair. The fly we speak of is small, and exceedingly elegant in shape; and so infinitesimally light, that it will walk about leisurely, as we have seen it do, upon the convex surfaces of the bubbles swimming on porter, without breaking them.

The operations of the firm of Messrs. Spinners & Co. continue but for a short period, which is always very much dependent upon the state of the weather. Jack Frost is the grand wholesale dealer in insect life. His approach strikes them dumb; and then the spinners shut up shop, and retire to their winter retreats.

The spiders have but a very indifferent character among naturalists. They are stigmatized as murderers throughout their

markable chiseling on the vault of the dungeon, a figure of Christ on the cross, cut on the only place illuminated by the straggling rays from without. It is said to have been done by a state prisoner long confined there, whose only implements were a nail and a stone."

Gizors, thy dark and moldy walls
Hold records of the shrouded past,
Such as the stoutest heart appalls,
While fearful visions gather fast:
The dripping stones, the rusty chain,
Murmur of days and years of pain,
Such sorrows as the brain will fire,
When youth's fresh visions all expire,
When life a crushing burden proves,
'Midst wildest memories, withering loves,
The wrecks of all we trusted when
We walk'd with false, but smiling men.
O, who that lingers on this spot,
Has ever banish'd or forgot
The sickening sense of wrong which gave
A man, a brother, to this grave;
How slowly, hour by hour, that heart
Throbb'd fainter, feebler, loth to part
With life, yet wishing every breath
Might bring the last, the best friend, death!
While still around him in the gloom,
That fill'd with night his living tomb,
Came forms and faces of the hour,
When, bless'd with freedom and with power,
He revel'd in life's lingering dream,
And was again what he had been;
Oft starting from sleep's troubled thrall,
Upon his ear sweet accents fall,
Of well-remember'd tones which rung
Upon the harp that childhood strung,
And, trooping on, came those he loved,
As on through youth's bright path he

roam'd;

But came to mock: his feet he gains, And wakes-the rattling of his chains

Young readers are apt to be perplexed at the appearance of cruelty in nature, such as seems to exist in the arrangements of spiders as a class in creation; but it must be remembered that spiders keep down the excess of insect life, and that the death of their victims, being almost instantaneous, is attended with only a momentary pain.

Recalls his scatter'd thoughts; he knows
A prisoner to the grave he goes.
Prisoner of Gizors, not to thee,
In thy long, dark captivity,
Come morning joy or morning ray
As to the free comes smiling day,
With life, and hope, and pride of power,
But rather at the twilight hour,
Sad and uncertain, pain'd and grieved,
As hope comes to a soul bereaved,
Struggling to roll the clouds away,
And bid the moody passions play
With youthful vigor, stirring power,
As when life was one blissful hour.
Thine was a weary waiting night,
Within that house of death, where light
Was doled to thee with niggard hand,
As food, when famine o'er the land
Spreads its o'ershadowing wing:
Tyrants in unlicensed power,
Grudged thee the light that marks an
hour,

As though 't was not God's blessed gift,
Who bids his sun his mantle lift,
And cast its dazzling folds on all
Alike, upon this whirling ball,
Till hills and valleys sing.

O tyrant powers, who joy to give
Pains, pangs, and poverty, who live
On brothers' blood and sisters' tears,
Whose hopes are fed by others' fears,
Who music make of shrieks and groans,
And gloat o'er scenes of carnage red,
Of reeking cords and crushed homes,
Where human hearts have burst and bled.
How can ye deem yourselves to be
Human, while making misery?
Might mocks at right, and power combats
With fiendish rage God's freeborn souls,
By rack and torture, made to bend,
And yield a right we should defend,
Home, hearts, and altars: vain the strife,
We yield to power and loathe our life;
And such may he who in thy gloom,
Gizors, sat withering in his tomb,
And left on that unconscious stone,
Where light just glimmer'd and was gone,
An impress of his inmost soul,
The thoughts which his whole life control,
An image of the meek and just,
In that pale, speaking marble bust,
The toil of years. He long'd to see
Christ in his mortal agony;

His was a heart which grief had strung,
His was a soul which wrong had wrung;
With wrongs, and griefs, and chains op-
press'd,

With anguish rankling in his breast,
With blasted hopes and faded eye,
He turns his troubled thoughts on high:
Vain his appeal to man is made,
His hope deferr'd, his trust betray'd,
He bows beneath his chastening rod,
His last appeal he makes to God!
O Calvary then thy shadows gave
Light to the captive's living grave;
Thy rending rocks, thy rayless gloom,
Thy startling cry, thy closing tomb,
Came to his heart like pulse of life,
And gave him victory in the strife.
One ray of light, all else was gone,
Shone from the cross; it drew him on