142 ARACHNIDA. 



under tarentismus were called. In the Philosophical Transac- 

 tions for 1672, a letter from Dr. Corneho, a Neapolitan physician, 

 was however published, in which it was stated that " all those 

 that think themselves bitten by Tarantulas, except such as for 

 evil ends feign themselves to be so, are for the most part young 

 wanton girls, whom the Italian writers call Dolci di Sale, who by 

 some particular indisposition, falling into this melancholy madness, 

 persuade themselves, according to the vulgar prejudice, that they 

 have been stung by a Tarantula." And a century afterwards, in 

 the same Transactions (for 1770), Professor Dominico CyriUo, of 

 Naples, states, that having had an opportunity of investigating 

 the subject in the province of Tarento, where it is found in great 

 abundance, he finds that the surprising cure of the bite of the Ta- 

 rantula by music has not the least truth in it. 



The most elegantly marked of the British species of spiders 

 belong to the family Epeiridce, of which each individual forms 

 its own web, which in some of the large exotic species, as the 

 Epeira clavipes, a native of the West Indies, is sufficiently 

 strong to hold small birds, which may by accident be caught 

 in it ; those of our own country are capable of retaining in- 

 sects of considerable size, w4iich form the prey of the spider ; 

 for this purpose they are suspended vertically between the 

 branches of trees or plants, or in other open spaces frequented 

 by insects : occasionally they are placed obliquely, and even 

 horizontally, as in the Epeira cucurbitina. No sooner is a 

 fly or other insect caught in the web, than it is approached 

 by the spider, wliich in a ciu-ious manner envelopes it in a sil- 

 ken shroud, by placing the tips of its fore legs at each extre- 

 mity of the insect's body, so as to form the points of an axis 

 round which the insect is whirled with rapidity, a dense layer 

 of silk being at the same time throwTi round it from the spin- 

 nerets. 



The order is divisible as follows. 



Section 1. Tetrapneumones, or those which have four 

 pulmonary sacs and four external spiracles on the under 

 side of the abdomen, (two on each side placed closely to- 



