Chapter 8

From the combination of such unfavourable conditions in Arctic countries and under the snow-line of mountains there results a curious fact, already hinted at above, that the coldest floras are also, from the purely human point of view, the most beautiful. Not, of course, the most luxuriant: for lush richness of foliage and 'breadth of tropic shade' (to quote a noble lord) one must go, as everyone knows, to the equatorial regions. But, contrary to the common opinion, the tropics, hoary shams, are not remarkable for the abundance or beauty of their flowers. Quite otherwise, indeed: an unrelieved green strikes the keynote of equatorial forests. This is my own experience, and it is borne out (which is far more important) by Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, who has seen a wider range of the untouched tropics, in all four hemispheres--northern, southern, eastern, western--than any other man, I suppose, that ever lived on this planet. And Mr. Wallace is firm in his conviction that the tropics in this respect are a complete fraud. Bright flowers are there quite conspicuously absent. It is rather in the cold and less favoured regions of the world that one must look for fine floral displays and bright masses of colour. Close up to the snow-line the wealth of flowers is always the greatest.

In order to understand this apparent paradox one must remember that the highest type of flowers, from the point of view of organisation, is not at the same time by any means the most beautiful. On the contrary, plants with very little special adaptation to any particular insect, like the water-lilies and the poppies, are obliged to flaunt forth in very brilliant hues, and to run to very large sizes in order to attract the attention of a great number of visitors, one or other of whom may casually fertilise them; while plants with very special adaptations, like the sage and mint group, or the little English orchids, are so cunningly arranged that they can't fail of fertilisation at the very first visit, which of course enables them to a great extent to dispense with the aid of big or brilliant petals. So that, where the struggle for life is fiercest, and adaptation most perfect, the flora will on the whole be not most, but least, conspicuous in the matter of very handsome flowers.

Now, the struggle for life is fiercest, and the wealth of nature is greatest, one need hardly say, in tropical climates. There alone do we find every inch of soil 'encumbered by its waste fertility,' as Comus puts it; weighed down by luxuriant growth of tree, shrub, herb, creeper. There alone do lizards lurk in every hole; beetles dwell manifold in every cranny; butterflies flock thick in every grove; bees, ants, and flies swarm by myriads on every sun-smitten hillside. Accordingly, in the tropics, adaptation reaches its highest point; and tangled richness, not beauty of colour, becomes the dominant note of the equatorial forests. Now and then, to be sure, as you wander through Brazilian or Malayan woods, you may light upon some bright tree clad in scarlet bloom, or some glorious orchid drooping pendant from a bough with long sprays of beauty: but such sights are infrequent. Green, and green, and ever green again--that is the general feeling of the equatorial forest: as different as possible from the rich mosaic of a high alp in early June, or a Scotch hillside deep in golden gorse and purple heather in broad August sunshine.

In very cold countries, on the other hand, though the conditions are severe, the struggle for existence is not really so hard, because, in one word, there are fewer competitors. The field is less occupied; life is less rich, less varied, less self-strangling. And therefore specialisation hasn't gone nearly so far in cold latitudes or altitudes. Lower and simpler types everywhere occupy the soil; mosses, matted flowers, small beetles, dwarf butterflies. Nature is less luxuriant, yet in some ways more beautiful. As we rise on the mountains the forest trees disappear, and with them the forest beasts, from bears to squirrels; a low, wind-swept vegetation succeeds, very poor in species, and stunted in growth, but making a floor of rich flowers almost unknown elsewhere. The humble butterflies and beetles of the chillier elevation produce in the result more beautiful bloom than the highly developed honey-seekers of the richer and warmer lowlands. Luxuriance is atoned for by a Turkey carpet of floral magnificence.

How, then, has the world at large fallen into the pardonable error of believing tropical nature to be so rich in colouring, and circumpolar nature to be so dingy and unlovable? Simply thus, I believe. The tropics embrace the largest land areas in the world, and are richer by a thousand times in species of plants and animals than all the rest of the earth in a lump put together. That richness necessarily results from the fierceness of the competition. Now among this enormous mass of tropical plants it naturally happens that some have finer flowers than any temperate species; while as to the animals and birds, they are undoubtedly, on the whole, both larger and handsomer than the fauna of colder climates. But in the general aspect of tropical nature an occasional bright flower or brilliant parrot counts for very little among the mass of lush green which surrounds and conceals it. On the other hand, in our museums and conservatories we sedulously pick out the rarest and most beautiful of these rare and beautiful species, and we isolate them completely from their natural surroundings. The consequence is that the untravelled mind regards the tropics mentally as a sort of perpetual replica of the hot-houses at Kew, superimposed on the best of Mr. Bull's orchid shows. As a matter of fact, people who know the hot world well can tell you that the average tropical woodland is much more like the dark shade of Box Hill or the deepest glades of the Black Forest. For really fine floral display in the mass, all at once, you must go, not to Ceylon, Sumatra, Jamaica, but to the far north of Canada, the Bernese Oberland, the moors of Inverness-shire, the North Cape of Norway. Flowers are loveliest where the climate is coldest; forests are greenest, most luxuriant, least blossoming, where the conditions of life are richest, warmest, fiercest. In one word, High Life is always poor but beautiful.

EIGHT-LEGGED FRIENDS.

A singular opportunity was afforded me last summer for making myself thoroughly at home with the habits and manners of the common English geometrical spider. By the pure chance of circumstance, two ladies of that intelligent and interesting species were kind enough to select for their temporary residence a large pane of glass just outside my drawing-room window. Now, it so happened that this particular pane was constructed not to open, being, in fact, part of a big bow-window, the alternate sashes of which were alone intended for ventilation. Hence it came to pass that by diligent care I was enabled to preserve my two eight-legged acquaintances from the devouring broom of the British housemaid, and to keep them constantly under observation at all times and seasons during a whole summer. Of course this result was only obtained by a distinct exercise of despotic authority, for I know those poor spiders were a constant eyesore in Ellen's sight--the housemaid of the moment bore the name of Ellen--but I persisted in my prohibition of any forcible ejectment, and I carried my point in the end in the very teeth of that constituted domestic authority. So successful was I, indeed, that when at last we flitted southwards ourselves with the swallows on our annual migration to the Mediterranean shores, we left Lucy and Eliza--those were the names we had given them--in undisturbed possession of their prescriptive rights in the drawing-room windows. This year they are gone, and our home is left spiderless.

They were curious and uninviting pets, I'm bound to admit, those great juicy-looking creatures. Nobody could say that any form of spider is precisely what our Italian friends prettily describe in their liquid way as _simpatico_. At times, indeed, the conduct of Lucy and Eliza was so peculiarly horrible and blood-curdling in its atrocity, that even I, their best friend, who had so often interceded for their lives and saved them from the devastating duster of the aggressive housemaid--even I myself, I say, more than once debated in my own mind whether I was justified in letting them go on any longer in their career of crime unchecked, or whether I ought not rather to rush out at once, avenging rag in hand, and sweep them away at one fell swoop from the surface of a world they disgraced with their unbridled wickedness. Eliza, in particular, I'm constrained to allow, was a perfect monster of vice--a sort of undeveloped arachnid Borgia, quick to slay and relentless in pursuit; a mass of eight-legged sins, stained with the colourless gore of ten thousand struggling victims, and absolutely without a single redeeming point in her hateful character. And yet, whenever any more than usually horrible massacre of some pretty and innocent fly almost moved me in my righteous wrath to rush out into the garden in hot haste and put an end at once to the cruel wretch's existence with a judicial antimacassar, a number of moral scruples, such as could only be adequately resolved by the editor of the _Spectator_, always occurred spontaneously to my mind and conscience just in time to ensure that wicked Eliza a fresh spell of life in which to continue unabashed her atrocious behaviour.

Has man, I asked myself at such moments, mere human man, any right to set himself up in the place of earthly providence, as so much better and more moral than insentient nature? If the spider cruelly devours living flies and intelligent or highly sensitive bees, we must at least remember that she has no choice in the matter, and that, as the poet justly remarks, ''tis her nature to.' But then, on the other hand, it might be plausibly argued that 'tis our nature equally to kill the creature that we see so hatefully fulfilling the law of its own cruel being. And yet again it might be pleaded by any able counsel who undertook the defence of Lucy or Eliza on her trial for her life against her human accusers, that she was impelled to all these evil deeds by maternal affection, one of the noblest and most unselfish of animal instincts. Moreover, if the spider didn't prey, it would obviously die; and it seems rather hard on any creature to condemn it to death for no better reason than because it happens to have been born a member of its own kind, and not of any other and less morally objectionable species. Jedburgh justice o£ that sort rather savours of the method pursued by the famous countryman who was found cutting a harmless amphibian into a hundred pieces with his murderous spade, and saying spitefully as he did so, at every particularly savage cut: 'I'll larn ye to be a twoad, I will; I'll larn ye to be a twoad!'

Nevertheless, in spite of all this my vaunted philosophy, I will frankly confess that more than once Eliza and Lucy sorely tried my patience, and that I was often a good deal better than half-minded in my soul to rush out in a feverish fit of moral indignation and put an end to their ghastly career of crime without waiting to hear what they had to say in their own favour, showing cause why sentence of death should not be executed upon them. And I would have done it, I believe, had it not been for that peculiar arrangement of the drawing-room windows, which made it impossible to get at the culprits direct, without going out into the garden and round the house; which, of course, is a severe strain in wet or windy weather to put upon anybody's moral enthusiasm. In the end, therefore, I always gave the evil-doers the benefit of the doubt; and I only mention my ethical scruples in the matter here lest scoffers should say, when they come to read what manner of things Lucy and Eliza did: 'Oh yes, that's just like those scientific folks; they're always so cold-blooded. He could stand by and see these poor helpless flies tortured slowly to death, without a chance for their lives, and never put out a helping hand to save them!' Well, I would only ask you one question, my sapient friend, who talk like that: Has it ever occurred to you that, if you kill one spider, you merely make room in the overflowing economy of nature for another to pick up a dishonest livelihood? Have you ever reflected that the prime blame of spiderhood rests with Nature herself (if we may venture to personify that impersonal entity); and that she has provided such a constant supply or relay of spiders as will amply suffice to fill up all the possible vacancies that can ever occur in insect-eating circles? Unless you have considered all these points carefully, and have an answer to give about them, you are not in a position to pronounce upon the subject, and you had better be referred for six months longer, as the medical examiners gracefully put it, to your ethical, psychological, and biological studies. The great point about the position in which Eliza and Lucy had placed themselves was simply this. They stood full against the light, so that we could see right through their translucent bodies, which were almost liquid to look upon, and beautifully dappled with dark spots on a grey ground in a very pretty and effective pattern. So favourable was the opportunity for observation, indeed, that we could clearly make out with the naked eye even the joints of their legs, the hairs on their tarsi--excuse the phrase--and the very shape of their cruel tigerlike claws, as they rushed forth upon their prey in a sort of carnivorous frenzy. At all hours of the day we could notice exactly what they were doing or suffering; and so familiar did we become with them individually and personally, that before the end of the season we recognized in detail all the differences of their characters almost as one might do with cats or dogs, and spoke of them by their Christian names like old and well-known acquaintances.

As the webs which Lucy and Eliza spun were several times broken or mutilated during the year, either by accident or the gardener, we had plenty of chances for seeing how they proceeded in making them. The lines were in both cases stretched between a white rose-bush that climbed up one side of the window, and a purple clematis that occupied and draped the opposite mullion. But Lucy and Eliza didn't live in the webs--those were only their snares or traps for prey; each of them had in addition a private home or apartment of her own under shelter of a rose-leaf at some distance from the treacherous geometrical structure. The house itself consisted merely of a silken cell, built out from the rose-leaf, and connected with the snare by a single stout cord of very solid construction. On this cord the spider kept one foot--I had almost said one hand--constantly fixed. She poised it lightly by her claws, and whenever an insect got entangled in the web, a subtle electric message, so to speak, seemed to run along the line to the ever-watchful carnivore. In one short second Lucy or Eliza, as the case might be, had darted out upon her quarry, and was tackling it might main, according to the particular way its size and strength rendered then and there advisable. The method of procedure, which I shall describe more fully by-and-by, differed considerably from case to case, as these very large and strong spiders have sometimes to deal with mere tiny midges, and sometimes with extremely big and dangerous creatures, like bumble-bees, wasps, and even hornets.

In building their webs, as in many other small points, Lucy and Eliza showed from the first no inconsiderable personal differences. Lucy began hers by spinning a long line from her spinnerets, and letting the wind carry it wherever it would; while Eliza, more architectural in character, preferred to take her lines personally from point to point, and see herself to their proper fastening. In either case, however, the first thing done was to stretch some eight or ten stout threads from place to place on the outside of the future web, to act as _points d'appuy_ for the remainder of the structure. To these outer threads, which the spiders strengthened so as to bear a considerable strain by doubling and trebling them, other thinner single threads were then carried radially at irregular distances, like the spokes of a wheel, from a point in the centre, where they were all made fast and connected together. As soon as this radiating framework or scaffolding was finished, like the woof on a loom, the industrious craftswoman started at the middle, and began the task of putting in the cross-pieces or weft which were to complete and bind together the circular pattern. These she wove round and round in a continuous spiral, setting out at the centre, and keeping on in ever-widening circlets, till she arrived at last at the exterior or foundation threads. How she fastened these cross-pieces to the ray-lines I could never quite make out, though I often followed the work closely from inside through the pane of glass with a platyscopic lens; for, strange to say, the spiders were not in the least disturbed by being watched at their work, and never took the slightest notice of anything that went on at the other side of the window. My impression is, however, that she gummed them together, letting them harden into one as they dried; for the thread itself is always semi-liquid when first exuded.

The cross-pieces, we observed from the very beginning, were invariably covered by little sparkling drops of something wet and beadlike, which at first in our ignorance we took for dew; for until I began systematically observing Lucy and Eliza, I will frankly confess I had never paid any particular attention to the spider-kind with the solitary exception of my old winter friends, the trap-door spiders of the Mediterranean shores. But, after a little experience, we soon found out that these pearly drops on the web were not dew at all, but a sticky substance, akin, to that of the web, secreted by the animals themselves from their own bodies. We also quickly discovered, coming to the observation as we did with minds unbiased by previous knowledge, that the viscid liquid in question was of the utmost importance to the spiders in securing their prey, and that unfortunate insects were not merely entangled but likewise gummed down or glued by it, like birds in bird-lime or flies in treacle. So necessary is the sticky stuff, indeed, to the success of the trap, that Lucy and Eliza used to renew the entire set of cross-pieces in the web every morning, and thus ensure from day to day a perfectly fresh supply of viscid fluid; but, so far as I could see, they only renewed the rays and the foundation-threads under stress of necessity, when the snare had been so greatly injured by large insects struggling in it, or by the wind or the gardener, as to render repairs absolutely unavoidable. The whole structure, when complete, is so beautiful and wonderful a sight, with its geometrical regularity and its beaded drops, that if it were produced by a rare creature from Madagascar or the Cape, in the insect-house at the Zoo, all the world, I'm convinced, would rush to look at it as a nine-days' wonder. But since it's only the trap of the common English garden spider, why, we all pass it by without deigning even to glance at it.

At night my eight-legged friends slept always in their own homes or nests under shelter of the rose-leaves. But during the day they alternated between the nest and the centre of the web, which last seemed to serve them as a convenient station where they waited for their prey, standing head downward with legs wide spread on the rays, on the look-out for incidents. Whether at the centre or in the nest, however, they kept their feet constantly on the watch for any disturbance on the webs; and the instant any unhappy little fly got entangled in their meshes, the ever-watchful spider was out like a flash of lightning, and down at once in full force upon that incautious intruder. I was convinced after many observations that it is by touch alone the spider recognizes the presence of prey in its web, and that it hardly derives any indications worth speaking of from its numerous little eyes, at least as regards the arrival of booty. If a very big insect has got into the web, then a relatively large volume of disturbance is propagated along the telegraphic wire that runs from the snare to the house, or from the circumference to the centre; if a small one, then a slight disturbance; and the spider rushes out accordingly, either with an air of caution or of ferocious triumph.

Supposing the booty in hand was a tiny fly, then Lucy or Eliza would jump upon it at once with that strange access of apparently personal animosity with seems in some mysterious way a characteristic of all hunting carnivorous animals. She would then carelessly wind a thread or two about it, in a perfunctory way, bury her jaws in its body, and in less than half a minute suck out its juices to the last drop, leaving the empty shell unhurt, like a dry skeleton or the slough of a dragon-fly larva. But when wasps or other large and dangerous insects got entangled in the webs, the hunters proceeded with far greater caution. Lucy, indeed, who was a decided coward, would stand and look anxiously at the doubtful intruder for several seconds, feeling the web with her claws, and running up and down in the most undecided manner, as if in doubt whether or not to tackle the uncertain customer. But Eliza, whose spirits always rose like Nelson's before the face of danger, and whose motto seemed to be '_De l'audace, de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace_,' would rush at the huge foe in a perfect transport of wild fury, and go to work at once to enclose him in her toils of triple silken cables. I always fancied, indeed, that Eliza was in a thoroughly housewifely tantrum at seeing her nice new web so ruthlessly torn and tattered by the unwelcome visitor, and that she said to herself in her own language: 'Oh well, then, if you _will_ have it, you _shall_ have it; so here goes for you.' And go for him she did, with most unladylike ferocity. Indeed, Eliza's best friend, I must fain admit, could never have said of her that she was a perfect lady.