ZOOLOGY. 415 



ous kinds, but, unlike most other spiders, has no net. It lives 

 in a hole in the ground, not much larger than itself when 

 pressed into the smallest compass, and the hole is covered by 

 a little door on a hinge, which closes by its own weight, or by 

 a spring. In the top of the door are several little holes, into 

 which the tarantula can insert its claws when it wishes to en- 

 ter ; and so quick are its motions when terrified, that it often 

 disappears suddenly under the eyes of men pursuing it, and 

 they have great difficulty in finding its hiding-place. The 

 door fits tightly, and is larger on the outside, so that it never 

 sticks fast. 



The bite of the tarantula is poisonous, but not fatal or at 

 least has never, so far as I know, proved fatal in California. 

 It rarely bites men, and generally flees when it discovers their 

 approach. The tarantulas have dangerous enemies in several 

 species of wasps, the females of which kill them by thrusting 

 eggs into their bodies. When the larvae of the wasp are 

 hatched, they make food of the carcass. So soon as the tar- 

 antula dies, the wasp drags it to her hole, usually the deserted 

 burrow of a spermophile, where she may collect twenty or 

 thirty dead tarantulas in one season. There are three differ- 

 ent species of these wasps : one kind is blue, another yellow. 

 Sometimes the wasp darts down repeatedly upon the taran- 

 tula, and does not touch him except with her. egg-planter, de- 

 positing an egg at every thrust. On other occasions the two 

 grapple, and the wasp continues to insert her eggs until the 

 tarantula dies. The editor of a newspaper of Mariposa thus 

 describes the killing of a tarantula : " Some of our readers 

 may have heard of the tenacity with which the venomous tar- 

 antula is pursued by an inveterate enemy, in the form of a huge 

 wasp invariably resulting in the defeat and death of the for- 

 mer. We were an eye-witness to one of these conflicts last 

 week, while on a ramble among the adjacent hills. This is 

 the season when the poisonous tarantula leaves his well-fash- 

 ioned abode to perambulate the dusty roads and smooth paths 



