Notes on an alleged species of poisonous Lizard, $c. 379 



towards the eye, you will see the light through the punc- 

 ture. ***** Whether the pores in the other parts 

 of the body are for transpiration, is more than I shall ven- 

 ture to affirm ; but as insects sometimes perspire, at least 

 this has been ascertained with respect to the hive bee, this 

 must be by means of some pores." 



We learn that some insects under alarm, discharge a 

 fluid from the joints and segments of their body. The 

 scorpion when assailed, or put in pain, appears as it were all 

 at once bedewed with a copious dark sweat. This coming 

 in contact with the human skin would in all probability 

 prove very irritating. Seeing that some insects undoubtedly 

 have pores, and the circumstance of a scorpion's evincing a 

 perceptible exudation, being taken into consideration — is it 

 not probable that the irritation caused by the contact of a 

 spider may arise from acrid transpiration, involuntarily caused 

 by the insect's alarm on finding itself on a warm animal sur- 

 face, or by the mechanical crushing it may undergo when 

 killed on some part of the human body ? The spider of which 

 I have endeavoured to give a figure* has very formidable ten- 

 tacula,f perhaps fangs may be a proper term, but as I have 

 not dissected one of these insects, I cannot decide whether 

 they are hollow poison tubes or not. Lister relates (Kirby 

 and Spence) that he saw a spider, when upon being provoked 

 attempted to bite, emit several times small drops of very 

 clear fluid. At any rate, that some juice or fluid in the 

 spider is venomous and irritating, is sufficiently shewn in an 

 anecdote derived from Turner, a writer on cutaneous 

 diseases, quoted by the authors already cited, of a woman 

 whose custom it was, every time she went into the cellar 

 with a candle, to burn the spiders and their web — " she had 

 often observed, when she thus cruelly amused herself, that 

 the odour of the burning spiders had so much affected her 



* PI. xi. fig. 5. f Fig. 5 a. 



3d 



