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apparently not very diflerent from other places where scorpions were rare. Here 

 I could not turn over a stone without findiujj three or four under it — a small, pale 

 species, said to be very wicked. 



About centipedes I can give you no reliable information. I never heard even a 

 report of their being dangerous, though the bite is said to be painful. Some say 

 that the legs are poisonous aiul that if the animal runs over the skin it leaves a trail 

 like fire. This, I take it, is all imagination. I have had very small centipedes run 

 over me, and they did not harm me at all. I never saw a centipede wound, and, 

 according to my experience, the animals are so timid that they will not try to bite 

 unless squeezed by a stick or forceps. Of course nobody would attempt to catch a 

 large one with the hand, but a bare-foot might tread on one. 



SiJiders, on the contrary, are very pugnacious. Species an inch long, if threatened 

 with a stick, will sometimes leap several inches at it. In one such case I was bitten 

 on the finger. The pain was no greater than that produced by the sting of a small 

 wasp, and there was hardly any swelling. In the American tropics "tarantulas" 

 are any large spiders, but especially the large hairy Mygales. I do not think that 

 these are dangerous, except, possibly, to a few persons. The only case of a Mygale 

 bite which has come under my observation was that of a man who was bitten on the 

 foot deep enough to draw a little blood. There was hardly any swelling and he 

 paid no attention to it. The story of Mygales killing small birds is true, but I do 

 not think that the birds are their regular prey. They eat roaches, large moths, etc., 

 and sometimes grasshoppers. 



Dr. Aaron writes as follows : 



* * * I am convinced that no healthy adult need have serious alarm from the 

 bite or sting of these creatures, although, as I have more than once found out to my 

 cost, their poisons are the cause of much and excruciating pain. 



Leprosy, yaws, the malignant forms of syphilis, are all very common among 

 negroes, mestizos, and half-breeds in the American trojiics, and it is among such sub- 

 jects that the poisonous insects and minor poisonous reptiles find their victims of 

 serious poisoning and death. But a man in good health, with pure blood and of 

 good habits, will in every case (in my opinion) throw off their effects in from one to 

 five days. My most serious i)ersonal experience was with a large " trap-door spider" 

 (Mygale? sp.) in Haiti. The creature was lurking in the dried sheathes of a bam- 

 boo clump that I was cutting down for building purposes and it bit me twice on the 

 back of the hand before I saw him (or rather her). From this bite, on which I used 

 the usual remedies, I suffered more or less for four days and experienced slight pains 

 for nearly a month. From tbe third to the thirtieth hours my hand and forearm 

 were terribly swollen and discolored, and during part of the time, at irregular inter- 

 vals, every pulsation was accompanied by pains akin to the worst earache. These 

 involved the whole arm and the shoulder. A severe headache was also a natural 

 feature. Fear had no part in this case, as I had been bitten before by a larger speci- 

 men at Port a Paix, Haiti. Why the effect was so severe I can not say. 



While keeping house at Half Way Tree, Jamaica, I was severely stung at the base 

 of the left thumb by a large female scorpion that had taken shelter in some letters 

 that I was examining. It was an odd coincidence that I was just beginning an 

 article for a New York syndicate on '' Insect Poisons," and was looking for a letter 

 from your predecessor, Prof. Riley, on the "red tick," "grass louse," bete rouge 

 (Ixodes sp. ?), when stung. The pain and the inflammation were much less than from 

 the Mygale. I have been stung by scorpions several times while hunting in rotten 

 timber and decaying vegetation for beetles, etc. Usually the effect is no worse than 

 that from tlie sting of the "locust-killer" (Stiziis sjjcciosiis). Bad enough, you will 

 say, if you have ever had a tilt with that formidable hymenopter. 



Centipedes have a fondness for A'ermin-infested beds, and the latter are as common 

 in Tropical America as the hairs on a dog's back. So it has come that twice I have 

 rolled over on fair-sized specimene of Julus (?). I am by no means. sure of the 



