ones— one reaches five inches in length— are not deadly at all. 

 though their bites are always painful. The worst in this province 

 are the little pale yellow ■Jurangos." as they are often loosely 

 called in Mexico; but there are other iion desert species to the 

 south that are even more dangerous. 



There are also two kinds of spider that should be avoided, and 

 there are places in this province where both of them abound. 

 These are the well-known Black Widow, the female of which can 

 be deadly, and certain hairy spiders, properly known as arvi- 

 cularians but commonly and erroneously called "tarantulas." 

 which, though seldom if ever deadly, can produce most unpleas- 

 ant effects and are definitely aggressive under certain circum- 

 stances. The Black Widow is a small, glabrous spider with a shiny 

 blac-k. almost spherical abdomen the size of a large pea; it carries 

 a bright red mark underneath that sometimes is of an hourglass 

 outline. It is a lurker in dark places by day. but at night, like 

 most other spiders, it prowls about, and if disturbed, it may well 

 bite. Like the sting of the scorpion, the hypodermic falces under 

 its head are so fine that they penetrate the human epidermis, 

 which then closes, making local treatment difficult. Cutting, as 

 in cases of snakebite, has for this reason been recommended. The 

 symptoms of Black Widow bite may be learned from many pub- 

 lications and need not be dwelt upon here. 



The danger of the arvicularian spiders is much less, but it has 

 been both grossly exaggerated and even more grossly under- 

 estimated. All spiders are poisonous, but most of them do not 

 carry falces long or strong enough to penetrate the human skin. 

 and all but a very few that do carry such falces have venom that 

 produces only local irritation and perhaps a little swelling. On 

 the other hand, several of the lycosids, to which the Black Widow 

 belongs, are deadly. Among the great host of arvicularians dis- 

 tributed all over the world are some positively enormous forms — 

 the biggest is probably a jet-black one (with eight orange-tipped 

 legs) that inhabits the heads of palm trees in the swamp forests 

 of the Guiana coasts, catdies small birds by leaping at them, and 

 has been known to kill rats and fair-sized tree snakes. It can 

 jump many feet downward, especially out of holes in trees and 

 banks, and it has a pair of huge, claw-hard falces under the 

 head. Some rather large species inhabit our various Desert Prov- 

 inces; at night they are hunters and predators and will stand up 

 on their hind four legs, wave their front four, and strike at any- 

 thing. All this proved too enticing for the writers of horror sto- 

 ries, so that the animals gaiaed the reputation of being one and 

 all monstrous man-killers. This is not the case, of course, but 

 naturalists, in their desire to strip away all this nonsense, have 

 leaned too far the other way. There are extremely poisonous 

 arvicularians. though it is not the great, black, hairy monsters 

 but some of the little, light-colored ones that are the most 

 dangerous. It is almost sure that one in Hispaniola is deadly, and 

 more than one in Mexico are undoubtedly very dangerous, pro- 

 ducing dire symptoms in adult humans and critical ones in 

 children, and even causing death at times. They should be strictly 

 avoided but not killed, since they are useful creatures that keep 

 down other even worse pests. 



In this province is another member of lowly groups that has. 



Right: The mouth of the Santa Elena Canyon, the gorge 

 through which the Rio Grande debouches onto the flood 

 plain surrounding the Chisos Mountains in the Big Bend. 



Overleaf: Formed of gypsum grains sorted by the wind, 

 the sands of White Sands in the lower Tularosa Basin are 

 blindingly white. They cover 125 square miles. 



