ON ARACHNIDA. 453 



people are pretty well recovered from the fright which it 

 occasioned in his time, and no longer believe that it can be 

 the cause of the malady which was imputed to it. The bite 

 of the three species of tarantula which he has described, 

 occasioned maladies, the symptoms of which were different. 

 Those which followed the bite of one of them, were, according 

 to him, very terrific, and sometimes assumed all the charac- 

 ters of a malignant fever. The patient often died of this 

 malady, or if the symptoms were mitigated, he fell into a me- 

 lancholy of a peculiar kind, and of which music alone could 

 cure him. But we are at present aware, that the tarantula 

 never occasioned any such disease, which was merely feigned ; 

 accordingly the bite of this animal is no longer dreaded. 



Nevertheless, we cannot avoid noticing some observations 

 in the Encyclopedie Methodique, which prove that sometimes 

 the bite of the araneides is followed by accidents more or less 

 grievous. In the southern part of Provence, a young peasant 

 girl, when sitting, found herself stung in the right thigh ; when 

 she was about to rise, on shaking herself, there fell out a very 

 large spider, which the pressure of her hand had killed. She 

 had crushed it at the moment on the wound, and experienced 

 only a trifling swelling round the place which was bitten, 

 and slight cramps in the thigh and leg, which were removed 

 by time, and a sudorific drink. A farmer of the isles of 

 Hyeres, aged more than sixty years, according to the report of 

 his children, was bitten by a large spider, in gathering up a 

 sheaf of corn. This bite at first occasioned only a slight in- 

 flammation, to which the man paid but little attention. But 

 the inflammation soon very considerably increased, and ter- 

 minated some time after in mortification and death, the 

 remedies which were employed being found altogether in- 

 adequate to stop the progress of the disorder. From these 

 facts, we may conclude, that under certain circumstances, the 

 bite of the araneides may be dangerous. The more or less 



