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CHAPTER XXVI. 



TROPICAL SPIDERS AND SCORPIONS. 



Immense Webs of several Tropical Spiders — Their Means of Defence — Beautiful 

 Colouring of the Epeiras — The Trap-door Spider — Wonderful Maternal Instincts 

 of Spiders — Enemies of the Spiders — Their Usefulness — Mortal Combat 

 ■ between a Spider and a Cockroach — Scorpions — Dreadful Effects of the Sting 

 of Tropical Scorpions — A Scorpion Battle — The Galeodes — Combat of a 

 Galeode and a Lizard — Formidable character of the Tropical Centipedes. 



AN insect, half of whose body is generally fixed to the 

 other by a mere thread, whose soft skin is unable to 

 resist the least pressure, and whose limbs are so loosely attached 

 to the body as to be torn off by the slighest degree of force, would 

 seem utterly incapable of protecting its own life and securing 

 that of its progeny. Such, however, is the physical condition of 

 the spiders, who would long since have been extirpated, if nature 

 had not provided them with the power of secreting two liquids, 

 the one a venom ejected by their mandibles, the other of a 

 glutinous nature, transuded by papillae at the end of their 

 abdomen. These two liquids amply supply the want of all other 

 weapons of attack or defence, and enable them to hold their 

 own against a host of enemies. With the former they instantly 

 paralyse insects much stronger and much more formidable in 

 appearance than themselves ; while with the latter they spin 

 those threads which serve them in so many ways, to weave their 

 wonderful webs, to traverse the air, to mount vertically, to 

 drop uninjured, to construct the hard cocoons intended to 

 protect their eggs against their numberless enemies, or to 

 produce the soft down which is to preserve them from the cold. 

 Preying on other insect tribes, which they attack with the 

 ferocity of the tiger, or await in their snares with the patient 



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