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This Book List Sectory 19
Page 06
Spiders, which do not undergo such changes as do most of the common, six-footed insects, winter either as eggs or in the mature form. The members of the "sedentary" or web-spinning group, as a rule, form nests in late autumn, in each of which are deposited from fifty to eighty eggs, which survive the winter and hatch in the spring, as soon as the food supply of gnats, flies, and mosquitoes appear. The different forms of spiders' nests are very interesting objects of study. Some are those close-spun, flat, button-shaped objects, about half an inch in diameter, which are so common in winter on the under side of bark, chunks and flat rocks. Others are balloon-shaped and attached to weeds. Within the latter the young spiders often hatch in early winter, make their first meal off their empty egg cases, and then begin a struggle for existence, the stronger preying upon the weaker until the south winds blow again, when they emerge and scatter far and wide in search of more nutritious sustenance.
Melbourne can hardly be called a very great man,--he had not the purpose or tenacity for that, and he thought both too contemptuously and too indulgently of human nature,--but I know of no historical figure who is more wholly transfused and penetrated by the aroma of charm. Everything that he did and said had some distinction and unusualness: perceptive observation, ripe wisdom, and, with it all, the petulant attractiveness of the spoiled and engaging child. And yet even so, one is baffled, because it is not the profundity or the gravity of what he said that impresses; it is rather the delicate and fantastic turn he gave to a thought or a phrase that makes his simplest deductions from life, his most sensible bits of counsel, appear to have something fresh and interesting about them, though prudent men have said much the same before, and said it heavily and solemnly.
Had we not constructed that raft--had we not been on board at that moment--we should have missed the expedition and certainly should have died. Had we been following the bank of the river on foot, we never could have seen the boats nor heard them, as the banks were extremely high, and it was never possible to keep close to the stream when marching in the forest; we always had to keep some hundred metres or so from the water in order to avoid the thick vegetation on the edge of the stream. In fact, Benedicto, who was walking in the forest along the stream, had gone past the boats and had neither heard nor seen them. When we shouted out to him he was already a long distance off, a boat sent out to him by Dom Pedro Nunes having to travel nearly 800 m. before it could get up to him and bring him back.
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