Habits of the Diadem Spider. 285 



In the same manner he unblushingly declares, (C I have dis- 

 covered a cure (for bee stings) not found in the Pharmacopoeia. 

 Press a watch key hard on the place after receiving the sting, 

 this prevents the poison from spreading, then apply moist 

 snuff or tobacco. " This method of preventing the poison 

 spreading is also commonly known, and is described in the 

 Rev. J. G-. Wood's compilation at page 53. Nor can the Bee 

 Master plead ignorance of this work, as it is recommended 

 by him, and also laid under contribution. 



We are afraid our readers will think that we have devoted 

 too much space to the notice of a work so utterly destitute 

 of scientific accuracy or literary skill : had it appeared under 

 ordinary circumstances it might have safely been left to the 

 obscurity it merits, and it is only the circumstance of its 

 having been announced as by the Times' Bee Master that has 

 given it a fictitious value, and which, unless its true character 

 was exposed, might lead to its being regarded as a prac- 

 tically useful book by those ignorant of the subject of which 

 it treats. 



HABITS OF THE DIADEM SPIDEE. 



(ARANJEJA DIADEMA, LINN^US; EPJEIRA DIADEM A) 

 BY JONATHAN COUCH, E.L.S., ETC. 



Seveeal years since, in a work entitled Illustrations of Instinct, 

 I attempted to trace upwards the development of animal 

 and mental endowments, from creatures that are endowed 

 with simple irritability, through stages of intermediate 

 sensibility, to those higher classes which are chiefly influ- 

 enced by instinct, but possess also a portion of reason which, 

 however, is subordinate to the more powerful animal im- 

 pulse ; and from thence upward to man, whose instincts are 

 indeed strong, but in whom reason so presides that the 

 former faculty is, or may be, subordinate to the latter. But 

 in the instances which were related, of habits and actions that 

 had been observed in a variety of creatures, as illustrative i of 

 these principles, I forbore to bring forward any which I had 

 noticed from the insect world, because, in the first place, 

 they had not been sufficiently observed, and also because I 

 felt disposed to pay some deference to the opinion then, and 

 perhaps now held as an axiom in philosophy, that, in the 



