SPIDERS AND REPTILES. 285 



and it is only for the sake of pointing to her analogy with 

 other aquatic preyers that we have again mentioned here this 

 very curious inhabitant of our streams and ditches, who may 

 be said, nearly in the words of Darwin, to 



" Bathe unwet her oily form, and dwell 

 Beneath the surface of the dimpling well." 



Another rapport between the reptile and the spider is to be 

 found in the venomous properties which, in some species, 

 belong to each. To say nothing of the far-famed Tarantula 

 (founder of the Tarentella), we read of the poisonous spider 

 of Elba, with its mortal bite ; and of another pouncing with 

 deadly fangs upon the heads of sportsmen in the cork-forests 

 of Morocco. The bite of our domestic spinner would seem a 

 reality to flies alone, and its venom to exist only in the imagi- 

 nation of spider-haters ; yet would the bodies even of these 

 seem to enclose something less harmless than liquid silk, if 

 we may give credence to that tale for the cruel related by 

 Amoureux. It tells of a woman who, on subjecting the 

 spiders in her cellar to the martyrdom of burning, received, 

 as they quivered and burst in the candle, a poisonous ejec- 

 tion, which, entering her eyes and lips, so frightfully inflamed 

 and swelled them as to jeopardize the life which, for her bar- 

 barity, she almost deserved to forfeit. 



Lastly, the analogy between the fly -catching spider and the 

 fly-catching vegetable is by no means so remote as may appear. 

 It is an opinion generally received, that the latter, such as the 



