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apparently not very different from other places where scorpions were rare. Here 
I could not turn over a stone without finding three or four under it — a small, pale 
species, said to he very wicked. 
Ahout centipedes I can give you no reliable information. I never heard even a 
report of their being dangerous, though the bite is said to be painful. Some say 
that the legs are poisonous and that if the animal runs over the skin it leaves a trail 
like fire. This, I take it, is all imagination. I have had very small centipedes run 
over me, and they did not harm me at all. I never saw a centipede wound, and, 
according to my experience, tbe animals are so timid that they will not try to bite 
unless squeezed by a stick or forceps. Of course nobody would attempt to catch a 
large one with the hand, but a bare foot might tread on one. 
Spiders, on the contrary, are very pugnacious. Species an inch long, if threatened 
with a stick, will sometimes leap several inches at it. In one such case I was bitten 
on the finger. The pain was no greater than that produced by the sting of a small 
wasp, and there was hardly any swelling. In the American tropics " tarantulas" 
are any large spiders, but especially the large hairy Mygales. I do not think that 
these are dangerous, except, possibly, to a few persons. The only case of a Mygale 
bite which has come under my observation was that of a man who was bitten on the 
foot deep enough to draw a little blood. There was hardly any swelling and he 
paid no attention to it. The story of Mygales killing small birds is true, but I do 
not think that the birds are their regular prey. They eat roaches, large moths, etc., 
and sometimes grasshoppers. 
Dr. Aaron writes as follows : 
* * * I am convinced that no healthy adult need have serious alarm from the 
bite or sting of these creatures, although, as I have more than once found out to my 
cost, their poisons are the cause of much and excruciating pain. 
Leprosy, yaws, the malignant forms of syphilis, are all very common among 
negroes, mestizos, and half-breeds in the American tropics, and it is among such sub- 
jects that the poisonous insects and minor poisonous reptiles find their victims of 
serious poisoning and death. But a man in good health, with pure blood and of 
good habits, will in every case (in my opinion) throw off their effects in from one to 
five days. My most serious personal experience was with a large " trap-door spider" 
(Mygale? sp.) in Haiti. The creature was lurking in the dried sheathes of a bam- 
boo clump that I was cutting down for building purposes and it bit me twice on the 
back of the hand before I saw him (or rather her). From this bite, on which I used 
the usual remedies, I suffered more or less for four days and experienced slight pains 
for nearly a month. From the third to the thirtieth hours my hand and forearm 
were terribly swollen and discolored, and during part of the time, at irregular inter- 
vals, every pulsation was accompanied by pains akin to the worst earache. These 
involved the whole arm and the shoulder. A severe headache was also a natural 
feature. Fear had no part in this case, as I had been bitten before by a larger speci- 
men at Port a Paix, Haiti. Why the effect was so severe I can not say. 
While keeping house at Half Way Tree, Jamaica, I was severely stung at the base 
of the left thumb by a large female scorpion that had taken shelter in some letters 
that I was examining. It was an odd coincidence that I was just beginning an 
article for a New York syndicate on " Insect Poisons," and was looking for a letter 
from your predecessor, Prof. Riley, on the "red tick," "grass louse," bete rouge 
(Ixodes sp. ?), when stung. The pain and the inflammation were much less than from 
the Mygale. I have been stung by scorpions several times while hunting in rotten 
timber and decaying vegetation for beetles, etc. Usually the effect is no worse than 
that from the sting of the " locust-killer " (Stizus speciosus). Bad enough, you will 
say, if you have ever had a tilt with that formidable hymenopter. 
Centipedes have a fondness for vermin-infested beds, and the latter are as common 
in Tropical America as the hairs on a dog's back. So it has come that twice I have 
rolled over on fair-sized specimene of Julus (?). I am by no means sure of the 
