ON ARACHNIDA. 
461 
the hooks with which its tarsi are armed, or to the claws 
which it employs to kill the birds, and the anolis. The 
obstinacy and bitterness which it exhibits in combat cease 
only with its life. I have seen some which pierced twenty 
times through and through the corslet, still continued to assail 
their adversaries, without showing the least desire of escaping 
them by flight. In the moment of danger, this spider usually 
seeks a support against which it can rise itself, and mark the 
opportunity of casting itself upon its enemies. Its four 
posterior feet are then fixed upon the ground ; but the others 
half extended, are ready to seize the animal which it is about 
to attack. When it darts upon it, it fastens itself upon its 
body with all the double hooks that terminate its feet, and 
stretches to obtain the superior base of the head, that it may 
sink its talons between the cranium and the first vertebra. 
In some other American insects, I have recognized the same 
instinct of destruction. 
When the mygale applies its claws on a hard and polished 
body, we see there immediately the traces of a liquid, which 
must be the poison that it ejects, and that renders its 
sting, or bite, dangerous. Nevertheless I have been unable 
to discover the issue through which the emission of this fluid 
is made, the effects of which are considered to be very formid- 
able in the West Indian islands. Never, either, have I seen 
the mygale employ, as has been strongly asserted, another 
fluid secreted by glands situated at the extremity of the ab- 
domen, and which is said to be darted by it against its 
adversaries, to blind them by its corrosive qualities. The 
individuals of this species, which I have preserved for a long 
time, and in great numbers, never had recourse to this means, 
in the combats which they carried on for the possession of 
their prey ; but I have recognized the existence of this 
liquor, which is lactescent, and singularly abundant in pro- 
portion to the size of the animal. 
