ON ARACHNIDA. 488 



aerial threads united in the form of unequal cords, and inter- 

 mixed, often answer the purposes of a net for catching flies. 



Among the different species of lycosse, there is one which 

 enjoys a very great celebrity, the far-famed Tarantula^ so 

 named from the town of Tarentum, in Italy, in the neighbour- 

 hood of which it is very common. The effects which have 

 been attributed to the poison resulting from its bite, or that 

 singular malady, called by some authors Tarentismus, and 

 the cure of which, as was beUeved, could only be obtained 

 by the assistance of music and dancing, have rendered this 

 spider greatly renowned. But since these marvellous facts 

 have been submitted to judicious investigation, and to the 

 lights of experience, they have lost, at least in the opinion of 

 educated and unprejudiced persons, this reputation, the un- 

 happy fruit of the terrors of a credulous imagination. It is 

 ascertained, at the present day, that the poison of the tarantula 

 is very little, or rather not at all dangerous to man, and that 

 it is very easy, through the means which medicine affords, to 

 prevent the least ill consequence from its reception. 



In the most southern departments of France, there is a 

 species of lycosa, which differs very little from the tarantula 

 of Italy, and which has even been confounded with it by 

 Olivier. He has studied its habits, and has published the 

 result of his observations in the fourth volume of the Natural 

 History of the Encyclopedie Methodique. It strengthens 

 with a fine and compact web, the interior surface of its cell, 

 and its eggs are in a silken cocoon. This cell consists of a 

 perpendicular cylindrical cavity, which it hollows in dry and 

 uncultivated soils. Its dimensions augment progressively 

 with the age, and often according to the bulk of the indi- 

 vidual. It usually places itself at the entrance of this, and 

 as soon as it perceives an insect, it darts upon it with pro- 

 digious swiftness, seizes it with its forceps, carries it to the 

 bottom of its dwelling, and devours it almost entirely, or leaves 



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