Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/258

246 library. As appearances are often deceptive, it would not be safe to predicate a literary taste of my bookish visitor, but the creature's measured gait and pedal sprawl over my written page did suggest the airs of a stilted critic. And yet, to use a trade-phrase, with all its seeming bigness, phalangium did not "size up much." Its egg-shaped body was exactly a quarter of an inch in length, and an eighth wide at its thickest part. Of its eight legs, each one in the shortest pair measured an inch and five eighths, and in the longest pair the measurement exceeded three inches, a considerable spread for so little timber. There was quite a good understanding between us. It would allow me to touch the long, thread-like legs with my pen, and even to lift one up above the others, and the queer thing would keep the limb raised for several minutes, precisely as I would leave it, as if it were hypnotized.

The phalangium is a member of a tribe of the spiders known as the Pedipalpi, because the palps or feelers end, like the feet of many insects, in a claw, sometimes a pair, thus making a forceps. After my tickling his perambulators, Daddy seemed to have got his ideas started, for, having adjusted his octapodal highness upon my manuscript in most admirable equipoise, he began the delectable exercise of scratching his legs. I am sure that the operation was enjoyable to him, while to me the sight was very interesting. If Captain Cuttle should find it necessary to try the flexibility of a whip-stock, it is supposable that he would take the handle in his left hand, and with a pressing motion pass the whip for its entire length through the iron hook which served for his right hand. The whip would thus take on a loop-like curve, and would straighten itself out with somewhat of a snap. Just in this way did my spider scratch his slender legs—for one at a time were these long elastic limbs passed through the hook of the palp, when the limb would be bent like a loop or bow in the process, and as it left the hook or claw by its elasticity would do so with an almost whip-like snap.

The higher one ascends the animal scale in such observations, the more pronounced is found this habit of scratching the skin-surface of the body. Individually, Maud S. and Coomassie may be "too high-toned" for such a practice. But these creatures are coddled out of conscience by the groom, who has the comb and the brush almost always on their pelts; hence, if these "high-bloods" come not to the scratch, it is because the scratch comes to them. Cushie and Dray, put upon their own resources, enjoy hugely a good rubbing self-administered against a tree or post.

Happening one day in my lady's boudoir, I picked from the cabinet what I took for a pretty bit of bric-à-brac. It was an ebony stem, about fourteen inches long, not thicker than one's finger, and quite daintily turned. At one end was attached a pretty little hand deftly wrought in ivory. It could not be called a fist, for I noticed that the fingers were only half closed. The nails were well developed, and