VOL. VI.] rHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 640 



was most affected with the penumbra somewhat rescmbhng the colours of a 

 faint halo about the moon ; this grew fainter and fainter, and after a few 

 minutes was no more visible. It did not seem to be caused by any clouds or 

 exhalations in the air, the sky near the moon being very clear, and the said 

 colours not appearing any where, but upon the dusky parts of its phasis. Possi- 

 bly it might be caused by the refraction of the light from the sun through the 

 atmosphere about the earth. 



Ltunce ad Fixas Appulsus Visihiles, nee non arctioresjuxta eas Transi- 

 tus, ohservabiles An. 1672 : Prcedicti, et ad Meridianum Latitudi^ 

 nemqiie Londini, e Tabulis Carolinis aceurate supputati a JoH. Flam- 

 STEDio, Derbiensi Anglo. N° 77, p- 2297* 

 These prognostications are not now of any use. 



Some Additions by Mr. Lister to his former Communications, about 

 Vegetable Excrescences, and Ichneumon Wasps ; with an Inquiry 

 concerning Tarantidas, and a Discovery of another Musk-sented 

 Insect. N" 77, p- 3002. 



You may take an occasion to put this quaere to your correspondents of Italy, 

 viz. Whether the tarantula be not a phalangium, that is, a six-eyed skipping 

 spider, as Matthiolus and others seem to tell us ? if so, whether some later 

 authors impose not on us by giving us a cut or figure of a net or reticulum or- 

 biculatum, which our English phalangia are never observed to weave, or make 

 use of in hunting ? and whether the person bit by a tarantula, be not ever, 

 when on his feet, disposed to and actually dancing, after the nature of a pha- 

 langium, which never moves but by skippings ; even as it happens with such 

 as are bitten by a mad dog, who have been sometimes observed to bark like a 

 dog, &c. ? And if so, what we are to think and credit concerning such and 

 such musical tunes, said to be most agreeable and tending to the cure of per- 

 sons bit by a tarantula ? 



Among other things I had the good fortune to present Mr. Willoughby 

 with a musk ant,* an insect observed by me not many days before his first 

 visit : the note concerning which take as follows. 



Sept. 2, I found in a sandy ditch bank, about a mile and a half from York, a 

 sort of very small pismires. 



* See of two or three more musk insects Number 74, and Number 76. 

 VOL. I. 4 N 



