Ol'servations on some tnsecis little knowrii 6j 



which are on the sides, two below, and two between the 

 upper and lowx^r ones, which arc shorter than the others. 

 Though I made inquiries among the inhabitants with the 

 greatest care, I could not find that there ever had occurred 

 any instance of people being hurt by this formidable animal. 

 In p. 257 of the same work Lepechin gives a further 

 account of this spider in the following words ; — " In this 

 place we learned some further particulars respecting the ta- 

 rantula. Having dug up some of their nests, we observed 

 what this animal uses as weapons against its enemies. 

 When it finds itself deprived of every means of flight, it 

 remains quiet, pufls itself up, and ejects from its back, as 

 if through a syringe, a white juice to the distance of two 

 arschines. I cannot, with certainty, say whether this juice 

 be poisonous or not, because none of us were inclined to 

 make the dangerous experiment. But we were assured by 

 one of the cossacs who w ere on guard at Woguti, that a 

 woman of Little Russia had the misfortune to feel the ef- 

 fects of this juice. She dug up a spider of this kind, and 

 on turning it with a stick it squirted some of the juice on 

 her h;md, which in a short time became inflamed : the part 

 swelled with unsupportable pain, and the most serious con- 

 sequences might have ensued had not a remedy been speed- 

 ily applied. The best antidote to this poison is the animal 

 itself. It is put alive into oil, and kept in that manner for 

 use. If the part exposed to the action of the juice be rub- 

 bed over with this oil, a cure takes place without any need 

 of employing music ; which, indeed, could not be obtained 

 in these districts, as the whole music of the country people 

 consists of a scrccking noise produced by reeds, or the stem 

 of the wild angelica {angelica sylvestris). These spiders 

 were so quarrelsome, and greedy of devouring each other, 

 that of twenty of them confined in a glass only one re- 

 mained alive as conqueror. The black sheep, it is said, are 

 gr<;at enemies of the tarantulas. These animals dig them 

 up from the earth, and rcadilv eat them ; on which account 

 these sheep are highly esteemed by the Cahnucs, who are 

 much airaid oi the Uirantulas, so that they never encamp in 

 places frequented by them, but proceed to some other di- 

 strict, hov.ever tired their cattle may be. 



Lepechin calls this kind of spider a tarantula, and conse- 

 quently it must have some similarity to the tarantula of the 

 !<ystcni. According to Fabricius the tarantula has ten eye?, 



in the following form, • • • • ; whereas that of Lepechin 



has only eight, as the large red eyes above the mandibles 



Vol. XVI. No. 61. E ^'ill 



