THE NIGHT-STINGING SPIDER. 113 



while a stranger being put in was always driven out or even killed. As 

 regards the senses of ants, though Sir John believes they hear, yet they 

 take no notice of any sound he could make, and though they undoubtedly 

 see, they cannot have very keen sight. His experiments do not confirm 

 the suggestion that ants are able to communicate to their companions where 

 food has been discovered, for when single ants- had been placed on food, 

 and, going back with some to the nest, were returning with companions to 

 the store, in every case where these pioneer ants were captured their com- 

 panions wandered about helpless, and failed to find their way to the spot. 

 Many other anecdotes of his exjDeriments were recounted by the honorable 

 baronet, who concluded by an interesting account of the provisions in the 

 vegetable kingdom for preserving the pollen of flowers from the assaults 

 of ants. 



THE NIGHT-STINGING SPIDER. 



"During the recent spell of warm spring weather, a well known ento- 

 mologist, Mr. C. J. Bethune, M. A., discovered in Central Park, near the 

 7th regiment memorial monument, a pair of remarkable looking spiders. 

 He watched them for some time, and found that they inhabited an under- 

 ground mansion ; that, in fact, they were burrowers. Provided, as enthus- 

 iastic entomologists invariably are, with a tin case for the reception of 

 specimens, the two active spiders were transferred with some little difficulty 

 to confinement, together with a portion of the sandy soil in which they 

 had evidently passed the winter. Mr. Bethune has since been studying his 

 prisoners, and he has now no doubt whatever about their identity. When 

 an New Zealand he had seen a spider seemingly identical with his speci- 

 mens; but the insect in question, so far as he knew, was peculiar to New 

 Zealand, and had seldom or never been seen even in Australia. 'As I 

 watched the pair of little wretches,' said Mr. Bethune to the writer, 'I knew 

 1 could soon test the question of their suspected identity with the New Zea- 

 landers. I had but to present my finger, but I was unwilling to incur the 

 probable consequences of the experiment. I had a Spitz dog. I took the 

 larger spider in a delicate wire tweezer, and I applied it to the inside of the 

 dog's ear. The insect was nowise loath. The dog howled in agony, its 

 head began to swell, its mouth to froth, until death relieved it in five hours. 

 I had resolved to destroy the dog anyhow. The spider thus became the 

 executioner of the canine and identified itself. Unquestionably the spider 

 ■is the New Zealand terror. The Latrodectus katipo, or night-stinging 

 spider, is the most dangerous creature in that distant island, and the dread 

 of European immigrants and Maoris alike.' 



"Till within late years comparatively little was known of the katipo, 

 except on the hearsay evidence of the aborigines, whose hair-raising stories 

 of the deadly eff'ects of its bite excited great and natural alarm. The 

 native name, katipo, signifies 'night-stinger' — being derived from two words, 



