SPIDER.] NATURAL HISTORY. 295 



burgeon and bloom. The biting of the Spinner that hight 

 sphalangio is venomous and slayeth, but there be remedy 

 and succour the sooner ; but the virtue of plantain slayeth 

 the venom thereof, if it be laid thereto in due manner, 

 and therefore other worms, as efts and frogs, that dread the 

 stinging of Spinners, defend themselves with juice of plan- 

 tain. And though the Spinner be venomous, yet the web 

 that cometh out of the guts thereof is not venomous, but 

 is accounted full good and profitable to the use of medicine. 

 And a manner Spinner hight spalana, and is like to an 

 ant, but he is much more of body, and hath a red head, 

 and the other deal of the body is black, sprung [sprinkled] 

 with white specks ; and his smiting is more bitter and more 

 sore than the biting of the serpent Viper ; and this Spinner 

 liveth most nigh furnaces, ovens and mills ; and the remedy 

 against its biting or smiting is to shew to him that is 

 bitten or smitten another Spinner of the same kind ; and 

 be therefore kept when they be found dead ; the skin 

 thereof stamped and drunk is medicine against biting of 

 the weasel. Also another Spinner is rough with a great 

 head, and the soreness and ache of his stinging is as it 

 were the ache and soreness of a scorpion, and by his biting 

 the knees shake and faileth, and also of the biting cometh 

 blindness and spewing. And another manner Spinner is like 

 to an ant with a great head, and hath a black body with 

 white specks. His biting paineth and acheth as stinging of 

 wasps, and hight formicaleon [ant-lion] for he hunteth ants, 

 but sparrows and other fowls devour him, as they do ants. 

 Against all biting of Spinners, the remedy is the brain of 

 a capon drunk in sweet wine with a little pepper ; also 

 flies stamped and laid to the biting draweth out the venom, 

 and abateth the ache and sore. And the same doth ashes 

 of a ram's claw [Bartholomew, <: lamb's rennet"] with honey. 



Bartholomew (Bertbelei), bk. xviii. n. 



THE Spider is a worm of the air. 



Hortus Sanitatis, bk. ii. n. 



THE great number of Spiders do foreshow that the 

 summer following will be pestiferous and plaguy. 



Lupton, "Notable Things," bk. ii. 82. 



