TERRORS OF A SPIDER FIGHT.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1367, 12 May 1898, Page 9

TERRORS OF A SPIDER FIGHT.

Manchester City News. I once had a spider pet of a kind the books enabled me to identify. He was a fine, big fellow. I caught him in the garden, carried him home, and for nearly two monthb he and I took a close interest in each other, he for the flies I introduced to him,*and I for the amusement he introduced to mo. I kept him in a milliner's box, letting him out when I visited him, specially delighting myself with allowing him to drop from one hand by his finespun thread, and then either catching him in the other or gently compelling him to climb back again by apparently eating his own ladder. One day I captured another spider of | the same I kept- him for a few ! days in -i S'-ptmte i«->x, .md thou, with the kindly idea <-f comp-vid'V-.s'np, I introduced him to '• Tiga ." I have seen dogs fight; I have seen chanticleer fight and slay his man; I have seen rams tight till, with his skull crushed in, one lay dead at the foot of the other; I have seen men : fight; I have seen women fight—at least they once were women —till they became a | confusion of blood and hair and shredded garments; but the fullest sense I ever realised of xnad, murderous passion let ungovernably loose, centred in one destroying aim and summoning every physical energy to its devilish service, I realised when those two spiders rushed to mortal combat. 1 stood in boyish terror as their tangled legs dropped off, torn by mutual rage: and as, with vicious dexterity, they struck each other with their poisoned fringe using i'cr their own destruction the

weapons and appliances with which Nature has provided them for the capture and slaughter of their nicy. I visibly turned " Tiger" was the victor; but even while with brutal wrath, .ill mangled as he was, i be hit and spurned his dead and limbless ; foe, he was seized with symptoms I took to i be paralytic, and in a minute or tw o I helped him to his death. And this fearless gladiator was «fraid' of, I remember, and never would tackle, a big blue-bofcU© fjj. What is courago ?