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Fear-inspiring is the appearance of the great crab-spider the Mygale avicularia, one genus of the formidable Arachnida family with a body two inches in length, and, when the legs are expanded, seven inches across, covered entirely with coarse grey, reddish hairs.
The bloody footstep suggested to Hawthorne by the antediluvian print in the stone step at Smithell's Hall, in Lancashire, serves as the key- note of this romance; but the eccentric recluse, the big crab-spider, the orphaned grandchild, and even Bronson Alcott also appear in it.
Alcott"; from which it may be inferred that the crab-spider was intended to symbolize Alcott's philosophy, and the catastrophe of the romance would naturally result from the unhealthy mental atmosphere in which the boy grew up, a catastrophe which in Alcott's family was averted by the practical sagacity of his daughters. The idea, however, became modified in its application.
The dispositions and appearances of the two children are also contrasted, as Raphael might have drawn and contrasted them, if he had painted a picture on a similar subject. The crab-spider is one of the most horrible of Nature's creations. Hawthorne saw one in the British Museum and it seems to have haunted his imagination ever afterward.
The falces, or reaping-hook claws, of the great crab-spider are of enormous size, and ai-e sometimes set in gold and used as toothpicks, from the idea that they possess some medicinal virtue to cure the toothache. The different species vary very much in their habits.
On examining it I found that it was a great crab-spider, one of the formidable arachnida, which are said to eat young birds and other small vertebrates, though they generally, like other spiders, live upon insects. This spider the mygagle avicularia will attack humming-birds, and, indeed, other small specimens of the feathered tribe.
On the rock-rose bushes, with their great pink flowers, "the pretty Thomisus, the little crab-spider, clad in satin," watches for the domestic bee, and suddenly kills it, seizing the back of the head, while the Philanthus, also seizing it by the head, plunges its sting under the chin, neither too high nor too low, but "exactly in the narrow joint of the neck," for both insects know that in this limited spot, in which is concentrated a small nervous mass, something like a brain, is "the weak point, most vulnerable of all," the fault in the cuirass, the vital centre.
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