380 Bui,Li-TiN 83 



everyone who happens to touch it." Observing some care, I have 

 been able to handle w^ith my fingers, several of the live specimens 

 in rearing cages v^ithout injury to the thick skin within the hand. 

 Having accidentally brought the back of my thumb in rough con- 

 tact with one, however, I almost immediately began to feel the 

 effects of the nettling hairs. Using no treatment, I found that the 

 effects became rather more severe than a like amount of contact 

 with nettles. The pain, while not intense, was sufficient to enforce 

 itself on my notice and was rather more of an aching pain and less 

 of an itching or burning sensation than nettles. For three hours 

 this was allowed to continue, then a wet paste of baking soda was 

 applied, and this soon relieved the pain. Soda seemed much more 

 efficacious for this purpose than for a bee sting. The following 

 day all pain was gone, only a few slightly raised red points, some- 

 what sensitive to touch, remaining. 



SPIDERS 



Of the invertebrates with which this bulletin deals, spiders are 

 perhaps the most universally feared. This being true, and since, 

 Arizona lies in that region of the country in which are found sev- 

 eral of the most dreaded kinds, we shall deal with this subject in. 

 considerable detail, taking care to be as definite and explicit as 

 possible. In the first place, it may be said that while there appear 

 in the public press frequent accounts in convincing detail, of per- 

 sons having suffered more or less severely from spider bites, inves- 

 tigation of these reports shows little foundation in fact. Scientific 

 men attempting to follow up and authenticate these accounts, either 

 fail utterly to find the supposed victim, the case being imaginative 

 or fictitious, or, on finding the victim or the physician in the case, 

 learn that the injury is only supposed to have been inflicted by a 

 spider; and often, too, that whatever the original cause, the effects 

 noted are due to germ infection of the wound and not to a venom. 

 Probably many reported cases of spider bite, are in reality made by 

 cone-noses. Spiders do have definite poison glands in the head or 

 bases of the claw-like biting jaws, and these discharge their poison 

 through ducts leading through the jaws ; and this poison is regu- 

 larly used in paralyzing prey. But as has been pointed out by 

 authorities, venom that will kill a fly is not necessarily harmful, 

 to man. 



Now, do spiders use their jaws and poison freely in self-defense 

 against man? The very common belief is that they do. The. 



