The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1896-12-25

| Will Hot oSll lOI Olu WlHe. IlS iioS Se-
tached to them labels of twenty, thirty
or forty Years ago, some year OF
grand vintage. He tells me so many
hundred bottles. know how many OF
my pets will soon cover his cellar In
cobWebs of the finest kind. put them
in little small paper boxes, a pair in a
box. I ship them in crate, with
many holes for air. Maybe 1 send two,
three or four hundred spiders. For
them I ask half franc each, ten dol
lars for every hundred. In two
months you would think his cellar was
not disturbed for the last forty years,
1t has cost him forty or fifty dollars
maybe but he may sell the wine for
thousand dollarS-yeS, more than that
! above what it had brought without
my pets had dressed the bottles in
robes of long ago.
"The merchant takes the parvenu
and the nouveau richie, who are easy to
fool and play with. He leads them
down into the dark cellar. BY the
light of the candle the customer sees
the rows OF bottles. Their necks are
deep in dust 1t is easy to blow over
them dust. The cobwebs drape them;
plain that there is here a great age.
All my cobwebs, mon ami. The custo-
mer has what you call the pulling of
the leg to him. He is proud. But it is
good for him. Good wine is only
meant for the man who knows it.
Perhaps a man has quickly made
great wealth and keeps grand estab-
lishment. He must have a fine wine
cellar. Perhaps he buys himself old
wines, dusty and cobwebby. But the
cobwebs are broken and en- deshabile
when the bottles are moved to his cell
lar. They have not the tone, the look
of the real old age, of the long years of
gentle rest in the undisturbed dark,
n'estce pas? Then he drives out to see
old Pierre, or writes from New York or
Chicago--I do grand business in Chi
cago. Sapristi, I send him my pets.
They work for him. Soon he can take
his rich friends into his cellar and
they say, Mon dieu, this Is superb; 1t
is magnificent. We give you Congrat-
ulations, my boy. This is what money
cannot buy. My pets stop working,
and they do what you call wink the
other eye. They then resume their
TOLL
'"Tell us how you raise them and feed
them, Pierre" asked the visitor insinu-
atingly.
SPIDER RAISING A SCIENCE.
"Corbleau, it is a science, this raising
of spiders. I have on hand at one time
about ten thousand spiders, old and
young. j brought some eggs from
France, and the choicest webmakers to
be found. Here is the queen of them
all. Her children are the superb spin
ners. Many hundreds of my pets are
her descendants. 1t is the kind bred
by my great uncle in France"
The old man led the way to a glass
dome in the corner, beneath which a
filmy web of beautiful pattern
stretched across nearly two feet.
Pierre touched one of the meshes and
huge black spider danced nimbly out
from her downy nest and ran up the
vibrating thread to the old mans fin
ger He gave her a. fly, and she
tripped back within doors with her
booty.
This is Sara" said Pierre. "She has
the grace, the chic, the slender beauty
Of the divine Bernhard. She is the
pride Of all my pets. All, here is lola
looking at you"
A hideous, hairy monster had
crawled up the fine wire netting that
kept him within bounds, and stared
sardonically not foot away from the
writer's nose A start and an exclama-
ton were natural, but Pierre looked
grieved.
II do not blame you much said he.
'fZoa is good natured and would not
hurt you, but he has the horrible look.
He has fits of bad temper sometimes.
Then, ventrebleu, look you out. He is
the bird spider of Surinam. His body
is two inches long, and he catches and
eats small finches and sparrows when
in the woods. His bite is bad poison.
I doubt not it will kill you But I tame
him with kindness. Yet he Is not
pleasant to think of running around a
room. He might have the bad temper.
He would eat all my pets in one day.
But he is king of all spiders-le grand
monarch. Therefore l call him Zola,
the most superb of writer's.
when the mother spider wishes to
lay her eggs she makes a little web in
a broad crack. See here is one weav-
ing her nursery. Then she lays fifty
eggs, perhaps, like petite jelly drops.
Then she covers them up in soft silk
en- cocoon and leaves them. In two
weeks, longer in winter, they begin to
hatch. 1t is very difficult. 1t takes
one or two days. The eggshell or skin
cracks off in rags. Mon dieu, but there
is a great struggle for the infants.
Then they grow, and in a weak look
like spiders. They mott often and shed
their skins like a snake. 1 must sepa-
rate the brood at a tender age. 1t is
hard to break up the family, butt sa-
pristi they devor each other until the
one is left, like your tale of the cats Of
Kilkenny" -Philadelphia. Times.
HlIsha nd-''HOw is that whether /