Morning journal and courier., 1880-07-12
SomnaI anu Gourier.
Monday Morning.: July 12, 1880.
Concerning Spiders.
What Would Happen if These -Detested
 Insects Were as Large as sheep.

insects W ere as Large Sheep.
 The natural historian of the London Tele- graph, who writes many entertaining articles on beasts, birds and fishes, discourses as follows on spiders in the issue of June 26: "A mouse eating spider, which has recently been added to the Geological Society's collec- tion, can, like the echis viper, lately noticed by us, only be justified in existing if we con sider it to be 8 supreme effort by nature in the direction of the hideous. It can stretch itself out to several inches, is as black as Q bear and as hairy, and as ugly as a night mare Nature constantly makes these efforts to teach us how horrible she can be when she likes; but she slips her horrors at us one by one, and at long intervals, so that the gen eral impression of her tenderness and grace may not be too roughly shocked. Her mira cles of beauty are well known, for she places them conspicuously in the front, scattering butterflies lavishly all over the world giving her painted favorites, the birds, wings to carry them into the notice of men, and, gen erally, making her prettiest creatures the commonest. She can, however, work mira cles in ugliness also but these she hides away from sight, so that men may come up on them a surprise, and thus gradually learn to appreciate the full extent of her powers. While the horse adds beauty to every road and pasture of the world, the hip popotamus conceals it's monstrosity in swamps and river rushes far from human haunts. Birds of delightful song and dainty plumage brighten every garden and grove; but the hairy apteryx creeps about at night in New Zealand wastes, and the dodo, practical joke rather than bird, never waddled be- yond the limits of single island. The harm less and pretty grass snake and the green lizards are common all over Europe but the loathly cerastes is concealed in Nubian deserts, and the iguana hides itself in the leafy wilderness of the Brazils. In clear, common water we find the shapely trout and hor hut 4ha c1i, OF the ocean bed lies the 'sea-devil' Thus, all through nature-beasts, birds, reptiles and fshes-we find the ugly things made secret of and the pretty ones displayed but in in sects nature, to work the same kind end, uses another means, for she makes all the com mon kinds so small that their hideousness is not apparent, and, where size is necessary, puts them out of sight, either under desert sands or tropical undergrowth, or at the bot tom of ponds and running streams. It is fortunate that she does so, for, taking the spiders alone. if they were of large size, they would mock the majesty of mans high birth, despise his bulwarks and unpeople the earth
 ''What conceivable system of defenses, for instance, could avail humanity against cre- ation of spiders as big as sheep? They would float across the sea in the diving bells which they know how to make so we'll, and swing themselves across rivers as they now
 
 at each jump, they could in a night traverse incredible distances, and walking in the morniug whole village might find itself mextricably woven up in 8 fog of web, every door, gate and chimney enveloped in a suffo- eating cobweb of glutinous ropes, while the grim twilight was made terrible by the steal thy motions of multitude of blood thirsty spiders. The monsters would bounce upon the human beings one by one, swathe them in murderous meshes, and sling them up to their tunnel roofs like naughty boys in row in an cgre's larder. We need not follow the fancy further, for it is evident from even this hint of dreadful possibilities what might be imagined if spiders were as big as sheep and still remain spider in character and hab- it's. Yet even if they changed their temper with their bulk, and when they became as big also as harmless as sheep, their presence would be almost too horrible to be borne. Their existence would argue the presence among us of such flies we should have to attack with shot guns, and grashoppers which we should course with greyhounds. Our rivers would swarm with dragon flies that would buffet boats crews with the wings | of swans, our trees be munched up like let | tuces by anaconda caterpillars and wood-lice go about in the bigness of tortoises. Exist 1 ence under such circumstances would be in ! tolerable, and the necessity of spiders to ! keep down the insect packs and herds that | would otherwise trample and jostle us out of | OredG DfIIldu WOuld only increase the nor | TOTS of our condition. The mouse eating | spider in Regents Park has fortunately been
 invited to come among us only as a guest,
 and not by any means to naturalize himself
 here, for his appearance and habits are
 abundantly sufficient to make us prefer his continuing to remain in the Brazils. He is,
 it seems, lat home'' in Bahia and there dis
 ports himself by jumping upon the backs of
 mice and little birds, in imitation of his com
 panion, the jagua, sucking out all their blood
 and then playing with their empty skins.
 As substitute for the common or domestic
 cat which, in these days of cats meat men
 and careless cooks has considerably lost its appetite for mice, and thinks it too much
 trouble to catch sparrows, the spider might, perhaps, be usefully acclimatized. But what l household would submit with any compla-
 cency to the domestication of such acreature?
 As it is, chairs prove hardly high enough
 when the average British spider, which can 1 sit on three-penny bit, and is afraid of an l able-bodied blue bottle, comes near a petit
 coat; and, if they were any bigger, we would
 have to keep ladders in every room for the ladies of the household, to escape to the roof The ordinary house-maid, who never could | abide spiders, would go about her occupa- tions with drawn sword, and scullery maids plead for the last cancellations of religion be- fore entering the cellars.