THE STORY-BOOK OF SCIENCE 



fangs, it dies almost instantly. But then, the spider 

 takes care to poison its weapon. Its fangs are ven- 

 omous; they are perforated by a minute canal 

 through which the spider lets flow at will a scarcely 

 visible little drop of liquid called venom, which the 

 creature makes as it makes the silk liquid. The 

 venom is held in reserve in a slender pocket placed 

 in the interior of the fangs. When the spider pricks 

 its prey, it makes a little of this liquid pass into the 

 wound, and that suffices to bring speedy death to the 

 wounded insect. The victim dies, not from the 

 pricK itself, but from the dreadful ravages wrought 

 by the venom discharged into the wound." 



Here Uncle Paul, in order to give his hearers a 

 better view of the poisonous fangs, took the epeira 

 with the tips of his fingers. Claire uttered a cry of 

 fear, but her uncle soon calmed her. 



" Don't be uneasy, my dear child: the poison that 

 kills a fly will have no effect on Uncle Paul's hard 

 skin." 



And with the aid of a pin he opened the creature's 

 fangs to show them in detail to the children, who 

 were quite reassured. 



"You must not be too frightened," he continued, 

 "at the quick death of the fly and of the bumble-bee, 

 and so look on spiders as creatures to be feared by 

 us. The fangs of most of them would have great 

 difficulty in piercing our skin. Courageous observ- 

 ers have let themselves be bitten by the various 

 spiders of our country. The sting has never pro- 

 duced any serious results ; nothing more than a red- 

 ness less painful than that produced by the sting 



