296 TROPICAL SPIDERS AND SCORPIONS 



and slender beak, they know how to pursue them and drag 

 them forth from the most obscure recesses. 



It is amongst the insects themselves, however, that the spiders 

 have to fear their most numerous and formidable enemies. 

 Independently of those which they find in their own class, the 

 centipedes seize them beyond the possibility of escape ; while 

 several species of philanthus, pompilius, and sphex, more savage 

 and poisonous than themselves, will rush upon spiders eight 

 times their size and weight, and benumbing them with a 

 sting, bear them ofi' to their jiests, to serve as food for their 

 larvae. 



But the insects which in appearance are the tiniest and 

 most delicate, are perhaps those which most cruelly wound the 

 spiders, by attacking them in their eggs, which they watch 

 over with such affection, as to be ever ready for them to make 

 the sacrifice of their own lives. The Pimpla Arachnitor pierces 

 with its invisible gimlet the tender skin of the spider's egg, 

 and, without tearing it, introduces its own eggs into the liquid. 

 The pimpla's egg soon comes to maturity, and the larva devours 

 the substance of that of the spider, from whence a winged insect 

 bursts forth — a phenomenon which made some naturalists, too 

 hasty to judge from appearances, believe that spiders were 

 able to procreate four-winged flies. 



Notwithstanding the disgust or horror which they generally 

 inspire, the spiders are, with very rare exceptions, by no means 

 injurious to man. However promptly their venom may act upon 

 insects, even that of the largest species of Northern Europe 

 produces, on coming into contact with our skin, no pain or in- 

 flammation equalling in virulence that of the wasp, the bee, the 

 gnat, or other insects of a still smaller size. The giant spiders of 

 a sunnier sky, armed with more formidable weapons, naturally 

 produce a more painful sting ; but even here the effects have been 

 much exaggerated, and the wonderful stories about the Sicilian 

 tarantula's bite, which we read of in Brydone and other authors, 

 are nothing but fables raised upon a very slender foundation of 

 truth. Azara mentions that, several of his negroes having been 

 l)itten by the large Avicular mygale {M, avlcalaria) of South 

 America, a slight ephemeral fever was the only result. 



In the country of the Makalolo, Dr. Livingstone feeling 

 eomething running across his forehead as he was falling asleep, 



