ANNIVEKSAEY ADDBESS. 9 



one case reported to him by Mr. Stephens, and consulting what 

 literature was available to him, he found so much against the spur 

 apparatus being really a poison apparatus, and so much in favour 

 of its being something else, such as useful in the sexual object, 

 etc., that he concluded thus : — 



"The question is surrounded with difficulties, and cannot be deter- 

 mined in our present state of knowledge/' and that " it was a decided 

 and unsolvable mystery." 



Now if we review these four accounts, we note that — 



1. They are all absolutely independent, not one writer knowing 



anything of the other three, three hailing from different 

 parts of the colony of New South Wales, and one from 

 Tasmania, and all from different periods of time. 



2. Two were in the human subject and the rest in dogs. 



3. The train of symptoms, mutatis mutandis, agree most perfectly. 



4. In all cases the poison was allowed to follow its natural course, 



nothing but external applications, if anything at all, being 

 ever employed by way of treatment. 



5. The symptoms were specific and differed entirely from the 



ordinary surgical effects of lacerated wounds. 



We may, I think, conclude that the poison is powerful enough, 

 at all events at certain seasons, but at what seasons, the accounts 

 do not permit me to say, though I think it is the pairing season. I 

 have set down these new accounts because I believe them worthy 

 of record, and perhaps this allusion may lead to something more 

 being done. 



POISON OF SPIDERS. 



We hear many stories of the poisonous effects of the red-backed 

 spider, Lathrodectus, and some time ago I began an investigation 

 of the variety not uncommon around Sydney, and which Mr. 

 H. H. B. Bradley tells me is either Lathrodectus Thorelli or 

 Hasellii, though he thinks these are only varieties. I have 

 accounts of the results of the bite of this spider from medical 

 men, which agree so well with those described as following the 

 bite of the New Zealand species, the " Katipo," that I am bound 



