104 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
the centipedes. Larger centipedes would have strength to crawl out of the nests 
of the ants, but when they were thrown back a few times, into the nests, the ants 
would disable them by eating off their legs. 
These ants are so furious that a person will sometimes have to divest himself 
of his clothes for a few minutes to get rid of them, when he has unfortunately 
stumbled upon one of their nests. 
Centipedes live under stumps, and dead pieces of wood, and in the walls of 
deserted houses. Mr. Robinson has lived in Texas twenty five years, and near 
Fort McKavett twenty-two years, but although several persons have been stung 
by centipedes, and bitten by tarantulas, he has never known any one to die from, 
the effects. Tarantulas appear the last of April. 
Mr. Robinson says the large red wasp that makes his nest of wood pulp on 
houses, will fight the tarantula and kill it. The wasps generally fight in pairs. 
Two wasps will attack a tarantula. As the tarantula is slow and the wasps are 
quick, they will dart upon it, and shake it as the terrier does a rat. Then they 
will fly off for a moment, and dart upon it again, and watching their opportunity, 
sting it. They seem to realize that the tarantula is a dangerous enemy, and are 
very quick, and careful not to give it a chance to bite them. 
There is a ground-wasp here that lives in a hole in the ground. Sometimes 
they are three inches in length. They will capture the largest sized tobacco 
worms found here on tomato vines, and drag them to their holes in the ground. 
The dirt-daubers, the wasps which construct mud nests on houses, catch a black 
spider and put them away in their nests for their young. The boys use the larvae 
of the red wasps for fish bait here. The San Saba is a very clear, beautiful 
stream, full of fine bass and a great variety of other fish. 
If we could only start an academy of science down here in Texas, and set 
people with scientific procUvities at work, we might make the most valuable con- 
tributions to our scientific knowledge. Texas needs a scientific survey of the 
State more than anything else. 
John D. Parker. 
Fort McKavett, Texas, May 2, 1883. 
LETTER FROM CHIHUAHUA. 
Chihuahua, Mexico, May 21, 1883. 
Editor Kansas City Review of Science and Industry : 
Within the recollection of men much younger than the writer the journey 
from Kansas City to Chihuahua, 1400 miles, was made only with ox-teams laden 
with merchandise, and occupied full four months of wearisome and dangerous 
toil and exposure. Now the same trip can be made almost over the same trail, 
in the luxurious palace-cars of the Alchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad Com- 
pany in less than three days, while the inner man can be regaled with viands 
