SPIDER. | NATURAL HISTORY, 295 
burgeon and bloom. ‘The biting of the Spinner that hight 
sphalangio is venomous and slayeth, but there be remedy 
and succour the sooner; but the virtue of plantain slayeth 
the venom thereof, if it be laid thereto in due manner, 
and therefore other worms, as efts and frogs, that dread the 
stinging of Spinners, defend themselves with juice of plan- 
tain. And though the Spinner be venomous, yet the web 
that cometh out of the guts thereof is not venomous, but 
is accounted full good and profitable to the use of medicine. 
And a manner Spinner hight spalana, and is like to an 
ant, but he is much more of body, and hath a red _ head, 
and the other deal of the body is black, sprung [sprinkled | 
with white specks; and his smiting is more bitter and more 
sore than the biting of the serpent Viper; and this Spinner 
liveth most nigh furnaces, ovens and mills; and the remedy 
against its biting or smiting is to shew to him that is 
bitten or smitten another Spinner of the same kind; and 
be therefore kept when they be found dead; the skin 
thereof stamped and drunk is medicine against biting of 
the weasel. Also another Spinner is rough with a great 
head, and the soreness and ache of his stinging is as it 
were the ache and soreness of a scorpion, and by his biting 
the knees shake and faileth, and also of the biting cometh 
blindness and spewing. And another manner Spinner is like 
to an ant with a great head, and hath a black body with 
white specks. His biting paineth and acheth as stinging of 
wasps, and hight formicaleon [ant-lion| for he hunteth ants, 
but sparrows and other fowls devour him, as they do ants. 
Against all biting. of Spinners, the remedy is the brain of 
a capon drunk in sweet wine with a little pepper; also 
flies stamped and laid to the biting draweth out the venom, 
and abateth the ache and sore. And the same doth ashes 
of a ram’s claw [ Bartholomew, ‘‘ lamb’s rennet”] with honey. 
Bartholomew (Berthelet), bk. xviii. § 11. 
Tue Spider is a worm of the air. 
Hortus Sanitatis, bk. ti. § 11. 
Tue great number of Spiders do foreshow that the 
summer following will be pestiferous and plaguy. 
Lupton, “Notable Things,” bk. ii, § 82. 
