CHAPTER IX.
THE SPIDER--INDUSTRY--THE STOPPAGE.
Before we pass on to those insect communities with which the latter portion of this volume will be occupied, let us speak here of a solitary individual.
Higher, and yet lower, than the insect, the spider is separated from it by its organization, but connected with it by its instincts, wants, and food.
A being strongly specialized in two particulars, it is excluded from the great classes of the animal kingdom, and stands isolated, as it were, in creation.
In the fertile countries of the tropics, where game abounds, it lives with its fellows. Some are said to weave around a tree one immense net, common to all, whose avenues they guard in perfect agreement. Nay more: having frequent occasion to deal with powerful insects, and even little birds, they co-operate in the hour of peril, and lend each other, as it were, a helping hand.
But this gregarious mode of living is wholly exceptional, confined to certain species, and peculiarly favoured climates. Everywhere else the spider, through its organism and the fatality of its life, assumes the character of the hunter, of the savage, who, living upon uncertain prey, remains envious, mistrustful, exclusive, and solitary.
But remember that it does not resemble the ordinary hunter, who gets quit with his journeys, his exertions, and his activity. The spider's hunt costs it dearly, if I may venture to say so, and demands an incessant outlay. Every day, every hour, it must draw from its own substance the essential element of the network which is to provide it with food and renew that substance. Accordingly, it starves in order to nourish, and exhausts in order to recruit itself; it grows lean on the dubious hope of afterwards growing fat. Its life is a lottery, remitted to the risk of a thousand unforeseen contingencies. Hence, it cannot fail to develop into an unquiet creature, sympathizing but coldly with its kind, in whom it sees possible competitors,--in a word, it is a fatally egotistical animal. And were it not so, it would perish.
The worst of it is, as far as the poor creature is concerned, that it is profoundly ugly. It is not one of those which, ugly to the naked eye, are rehabilitated by the microscope. The overwhelming speciality of its career has the effect, as we see among men, of attenuating one limb, exaggerating another, and prevents anything like harmony: the blacksmith is frequently a hunchback. In the same manner the spider is pot-bellied. Nature has sacrificed everything to its function, its wants, and the industrial apparatus which will satisfy those wants. It is an artisan, a rope-maker, a spinner, and a weaver. Do not look at its figure, but at the product of its art. It is not only a spinner, but a spinning-mill.
Concentrated and circular, with eight feet around its body, and eight vigilant eyes in its head, it causes astonishment by the eccentric prominency of its enormous belly. An ignoble feature, wherein the careless observer reads the result of gormandising! Alas, it is just the contrary! This big belly is its workshop, its magazine, the pouch where the rope-maker carries in front of it the material of the thread which it winds and unwinds; but as it fills this pouch with nothing but its very substance, it enlarges only at the expense of itself, and by dint of extreme sobriety. And you shall often see it, though emaciated in every limb, retaining full and expanded the treasure which is the indispensable element of its labour, the hope of its industry, and its only chance of a future. A true type of the man of industry! "If I fast to-day," it says, "I shall eat perhaps to-morrow; but if my material runs short, all is over,--my stomach must rest and fast for ever!"
My first relations with the spider were nothing less than agreeable. In my poverty-blighted childhood, while I toiled alone (as I have said in my book on "The People") in the then ruinous and desolate printing-office of my father, the temporary workshop was in a kind of cellar, sufficiently well lighted,--being a cellar in the boulevard where my family resided, but on the ground-floor so far as concerned the adjoining street. Through a large grated window the mid-day sun obliquely lighted up the sombre case where I put together my little leaden letters. There, at the angle of the wall, I distinctly perceived a prudent spider, which, supposing the stray sunbeam would bring some imprudent fly for its breakfast, drew near my case. This sunbeam, falling not in its corner but nearer me, was a natural temptation to invite its closer approach. In spite of my innate disgust, I admired the progressive ratio of timid, slow, and prudent experiment by which it ascertained the character of him to whose mercy it virtually confided its very existence. It watched me closely with all its eight eyes, and propounded to itself the problem, "Is he, or is he not, an enemy?"
Without analyzing its figure, or very clearly distinguishing its eyes, I felt that I was observed and watched; and apparently this observation, in the long run, proved favourable to me. By the instinct of work, perhaps (which is very great in its species), it perceived that I was really a peaceful labourer, and that I was busy, like itself, in weaving my cobweb. However this may be, it abandoned its stratagems and precautions with a quick decision, as if adopting an adventurous and somewhat perilous step. Not without grace it descended upon its thread, and planted itself resolutely on our respective frontier--the edge of my case, favoured, at that moment, with a golden ray of the sickly sun.
I was divided between two sentiments. I confess that I did not relish so close an intimacy,--the figure of such a friend pleased me but little; on the other hand, this prudent and observant being, which certainly did not lavish its confidence, seemed to say to me: "Wherefore should I not enjoy a little of thy sun? So different in nature, we have nevertheless arrived together from our necessitous toil and cold obscurity at this sweet banquet of light. Let us take heart, and fraternize. This ray which you permit me to share, receive it from me, and preserve it. In another half century, it will kindle up your winter."
As the little black fairy said this in its own language, whispering low, very low--in fact, it could not be lower (for it is thus that fairies speak)--I marked the effect of it vaguely, and it slumbered in my mind. The circumstance, however, was recalled for a brief while some years ago; and again, after a long interval, it has been revived on this very day, when for the first time I record and explain it.
On the former occasion, after a domestic affliction, I was spending my holidays in Paris, and I went daily alone to walk in my little garden in the Rue des Postes. My family were in the country. Mechanically I remarked the beautiful concentric stars which the spiders had woven round my trees, and which they repaired and remade incessantly with a laudable industry, giving themselves immense trouble to preserve my small stock of fruits and grapes, and relieving myself from the importunity of flies and the stings of gnats. They reminded me of the black domestic spider which, in my childhood, had entered into conversation with me. These latter were very different. Daughters of air and light, always exposed, always before the eyes of men, without other shelter than the surface of a leaf, where they may easily be captured, they are unable to cultivate the reserve or diplomacy of my old acquaintance. All their work, is visible, all their little mystery open to the wind, and their persons at everybody's discretion; they have no other protection than what may be afforded them through compassion, or in consideration of a well-understood interest in the positive services which they render.
Those which suspend their nests to the branches of trees, like those which suspend them to our windows, display an evident design to place themselves in the wind, where a current of air may waft the insects to them, or in the path of a ray of light in which the gnat may float and whirl. The web does not fall vertically, for such a position would restrict it to one current; the spider, like an able seaman, gives it a great obliquity, and thus secures a couple of currents, or even more.
From the extremity of its belly, four screw-plates or tubercles, which can be drawn in or out (like telescopes), eject by their movement a very little cloud, that increases in size from minute to minute. This cloud is composed of threads of an infinite tenuity; each tubercle secretes a thousand, and the four, by combining together their four thousand threads, make the unique and tolerably strong thread of which the web is woven.
Mark well, that the threads of the intelligent manufacturer are not all alike, but of different strength and quality according to their destination. Some are dry for warping, others viscous for gluing. The tissues of the nest intended for the reception of the new-born are of a cottony material, while those which will enwrap the cocoon containing the eggs possess all the resistant power necessary for the safety of the latter.
When the spider has produced a sufficient quantity of thread to undertake a web, it voluntarily glides from an elevated point, and unwinds its skein. There it remains suspended, and afterwards reascending to its starting-point by the assistance of its tiny cordage, moves towards another point; and continues to trace in this manner a series of radii all diverging from the same centre.
The skein stretched, it is busied next in weaving the woof by crossing the thread. Running from radius to radius, it touches each with its tubercles, which fasten to it the circular border. The whole is not a compact tissue, but a veritable network, so geometrically proportioned that all the meshes of the circle are invariably of the same size.
This web, woven out of itself, living and vibrating, is much more than an instrument; it is a part of its being. Itself of a circular form, the spider seems to expand within this circle, and prolong the filaments of its nerves to the radiating threads which it weaves. In the centre of its web lies its greatest force for attack or defence. Out of that centre it is timid; a fly will make it recoil. The web is its electric telegraph, responding to the lightest touch, and revealing the presence of an imperceptible and almost imponderable victim; while, at the same time, being slightly viscous in substance, it retains the prey, or delays and entangles a dangerous enemy.
In windy weather, the continual agitation of the web prevents it from giving an account of what transpires, and the spider then remains at the centre. But usually it keeps near its machinery, hidden under a leaf, that it may not terrify its victims, or fall a prey to any of its numerous foes.
Prudence and patience, rather than courage, are its characteristics. Its experience is too great, it has undergone too many accidents and misadventures, it is too much accustomed to the severities of fate, to indulge in any surpassing audacity. It is afraid even of an ant. The latter, often a mischievous individual, a restless and rugged rodent, and afraid of nothing, frequently persists in exploring the strange woof, of which it can make nothing. The spider accordingly gives way to it,--whether it fears the acid of the ant, which burns like aquafortis, or whether, like a good artisan, it calculates that a long and obstinate struggle will cost it more time than will the manufacture of another web. Therefore, without yielding to the slightest susceptibility of self-love, it allows the ant to strut about, and takes up its post a little further off.
* * * * *
Every animal lives by depredation. Nature is ever devouring itself; but the prey is not always sought and merited by a patient industry deserving of respect. No being, however, is so much the plaything of fate as the spider. Like every good workman, it has a twofold value: in its work and its person. An infinity of insects--the murderous carabus, or the _libellula_, an elegant and splendid assassin--have only their bodies and their weapons, and spend their lives joyously in killing. Others possess secure and easily defended asylums, where they have cause to fear few dangers. The field-spider has neither the one nor the other advantage. It is in the position of the respectable operative, who, through his small and ill-guaranteed fortune, attracts or tempts cupidity or insolence. The lizard from below, the squirrel from above, hunt the feeble hunter. The inert frog darts at it the viscous tongue, which glues it and renders it immovable. It is the felicity of the swallow, in her graceful circle, to carry off, without injuring, the spider and his web; and all birds look upon it as a great dainty or an excellent medicine. The nightingale, faithful, like all great singers, to a certain hygiene, prescribes for herself, as an occasional purgative, a spider.
Even if she be not swallowed up herself, if the instrument of her trade is destroyed, the consequences are the same. Should the web be undone blow upon blow, a somewhat protracted fast renders it unable to secrete a fresh supply of thread, and it soon perishes of hunger. It is constantly confined in this vicious circle:--
To spin, it requires food;
To feed, it must spin.
Its thread, for the spider as for the Parcæ, is that of destiny.
We once made the experiment of removing three times running a spider's web. Three times, in six hours, it replaced it, with admirable patience, and without abating one jot of hope. The experiment was a cruel one, and we now reproach ourselves for it. We meet with too many poor unfortunates, whom accidents of this kind have thrown out of work, and who are thenceforth too exhausted to resume their industry. One sees them, like living skeletons, attempting fruitlessly a different trade, in which they succeed but poorly, and mournfully envying the long legs of the field-spiders, which gain their living by incessant travelling.
When people speak of the eager gluttony of the spider, they forget that it must either eat a double quantity, or soon perish: eat to recruit its body, and eat to renew its thread.
Three circumstances contribute to wear it out: the ardour of incessant work, its nervous susceptibility--which is carried to an extreme--and its twofold respiratory system.
For it has not only the passive respiration of the insect, which receives, or submits to, the air introduced through its stigmata; it has also a kind of active respiration, analogous to the play of the lungs in the higher animals. It takes the air and masters it, transforms and decomposes it, and incessantly renews it. If you do but examine its movements, you feel that it is something more than an insect; the vital glow traverses its frame in a rapid circulation; the heart beats very differently from what it does in the fly or butterfly.
But its superiority is its peril. The insect braves with impunity the strongest odours and mephitic miasmas. The spider cannot endure them. Instantly affected by them, it falls into convulsions, struggles, and expires. I saw this incident one day at Lucerne. Chloroform, whose action the stag-beetle had endured for fourteen days without succumbing, immediately--at the first contact--overpowered the spider. Yet the victim was a large one, and I found it engaged in eating a gnat. I wished to experiment, and poured on it a single drop. The effect was terrible. Nothing more pitiful could be seen in a case of human asphyxia. It tumbled over, raised itself, and then swooned; all its supports failed it, and its limbs appeared disjointed. One thing was very pathetic--that in this supreme moment the fecundity of its bosom became apparent; in its agony, its tubercles sent forth their little cloudy woof, so that you might have believed it to be working even in death.
I felt oppressed, and in the hope that the fresh air would perhaps revive it, I placed it on my window-sill; but it was no longer _itself_. I know not how the effect was produced; but it seemed to have melted away, and nothing of it remained but its skeleton. The vanished substance had left but its shadow, which the wind bore away to the neighbouring lake.