cruelty, on the sole ground that he
catches flies, though we do not pretend that we are fond of flies, and
conveniently ignore the fact that, if the spider did not swat that
fly, we should probably swat it ourselves.

The real charge against the spider is that he doesn't make any food
for us. As for the virtue and nobility of the bee, I don't see it. The
only way in which she is able to accumulate all that honey at all is
by massacring the unfortunate males by the thousand as soon as she
conveniently can, a piece of Prussianism which may be justified on
purely material grounds, but is scarcely consistent with her high
reputation for morality and lovingkindness. If it could be shown that
the bee consciously collected all that honey with the idea that we
should annex it there might be something to be said for her on moral
grounds; but nobody pretends that. Now look at the spider. We are told
that as a commercial product spider-silk has been found to be equal if
not superior to the best silk spun by the Lepidopterous larvae, with
whom, of course, you are familiar. "But the cannibalistic propensities
of spiders, making it impossible to keep more than one in a single
receptacle ... have hitherto prevented the silk being used ... for
textile fabrics." So that it comes to this: if spiders are useless
because they eat each other, the bees do much the same thing (only
wholesale), but it makes them commercially useful. The bee therefore
we place upon a pinnacle of respectability, but the spider we despise.
Faugh! the hypocrisy of it makes me sick. My children will be taught
to venerate the spider and despise the bee.

For, putting aside the question of moral values, look what the spider
can do. What is there in the clammy, not to say messy, honey-comb to
be compared with the delicate fabric of the spider's web? Indeed,
should we ever have given a single thought to the honey-comb if it had
had no honey in it? Do we become lyrical about the wasp's comb? We do
not. It is a case where greed and materialism have warped our artistic
perceptions. The spider can lower itself from the drawing-room ceiling
to the floor by a silken thread produced out of itself. Still more
marvellous, he can climb up the same thread to the ceiling when he
is bored, winding up the thread inside him as he goes, and so making
pursuit impossible. What can the bee do to equal that? And how is it
done? We don't even know. _The Encyclopaedia Britannica_ doesn't k