I 



The Black-Bellied Tarantula 33 



The Grasshopper order suppHed me with a 

 second series of victims : Green Grasshoppers 

 as long as one's finger, large-headed Locusts, 

 Ephippigerae.^ The same result follows when 

 these are bitten in the neck : lightning death. 

 When injured elsewhere, notably in the abdomen, 

 the subject of the experiment resists for some 

 time. I have seen a Grasshopper, bitten in 

 the belly, cling firmly for fifteen hours to the 

 smooth, upright wall of the glass bell that 

 constituted his prison. At last, he dropped 

 off and died. Where the Bee, that delicate 

 organism, succumbs in less than half an hour, 

 the Grasshopper, coarse ruminant that he is, 

 resists for a whole day. Put aside these 

 differences, caused by unequal degrees of organic 

 sensitiveness, and we sum up as follows : when 

 bitten by the Tarantula in the neck, an insect, 

 chosen from among the largest, dies on the 

 spot ; when bitten elsewhere, it perishes also, 

 but after a lapse of time which varies con- 

 siderably in the different entomological orders. 



This explains the long hesitation of the 

 Tarantula, so wearisome to the experimenter 



^ A family of Grasshoppers. — Translator's Note. 

 C 



