The Life of the Spider 



ning death. When injured elsewhere, not- 

 ably in the abdomen, the subject of the 

 experiment resists for some time. I have seen 

 a Grasshopper, bitten in the belly, cling firmly 

 for fifteen hours to the smooth, upright wall 

 of the glass bell that constituted his prison. 

 At last, he dropped off and died. Where the 

 Bee, that delicate organism, succumbs in less 

 than half an hour, the Grasshopper, coarse 

 ruminant that he is, resists for a whole day. 

 Put aside these differences, caused by unequal 

 degrees of organic sensitiveness, and we sum 

 up as follows : when bitten by the Tarantula 

 in the neck, an insect, chosen from among the 

 largest, dies on the spot; when bitten else- 

 where, it perishes also, but after a lapse of 

 time which varies considerably in the different 

 entomological orders. 



This explains the long hesitation of the 

 Tarantula, so wearisome to the experimenter 

 when he presents to her, at the entrance to the 

 burrow, a rich, but dangerous prey. The ma- 

 jority refuse to fling themselves upon the Car- 

 penter-bee. The fact is that a quarry of this 

 kind cannot be seized recklessly: the huntress 

 who missed her stroke by biting at random 

 would do so at the risk of her life. The 



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