A TRAGEDY IN YELLOW
Quite a distinct tragedy occurred the other day. The little yellow
diurnal moth commonly known as "the wanderer" has a partiality for the
nectar of the "bachelor's button," as yellow as itself. The morning was
gay with butterflies. A "wanderer" poised over a yellow cushion
fluttered spasmodically, and remained fixed and steadfast with
tightly-closed wings. It allowed itself to be touched without showing
uneasiness, and when a brisk movement was made to frighten it to flight
it was still steady as a statue. Closer inspection revealed the cause.
The body was tightly-gripped in the mandibles of a spider, a yellow
rotund spider with long, slender, greeny-yellowy legs. Under cover of
the yellow flower the yellow spider had seized the yellow moth. A
general inspection showed that the tragedy was almost as universal as
the flowers. There were few flowers which did not conceal a spider, and
few spiders which had not murdered a moth. The conspiracy between the
flower and the spider for the undoing of the moth (a conspiracy from
which both profited) was repeated thousands of times this bright
morning, and it illustrated the profundity of Nature's lesser tragedies,
the sternness with which she adjusts her equilibriums.
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