ON ARACHNIDA. 
483 
aerial threads united in the form of unequal cords, and inter- 
mixed, often answer the purposes of a net for catching flies. 
Among the different species of lycosse, there is one which 
enjoys a very great celebrity, the far-famed Tarantula , so 
named from the town of Tarentum, in Italy, in the neighbour- 
hood of which it is very common. The effects which have 
been attributed to the poison resulting from its bite, or that 
singular malady, called by some authors Tarentismus , and 
the cure of which, as was believed, could only be obtained 
by the assistance of music and dancing, have rendered this 
spider greatly renowned. But since these marvellous facts 
have been submitted to judicious investigation, and to the 
lights of experience, they have lost, at least in the opinion of 
educated and unprejudiced persons, this reputation, the un- 
happy fruit of the terrors of a credulous imagination. It is 
ascertained, at the present day, that the poison of the tarantula 
is very little, or rather not at all dangerous to man, and that 
it is very easy, through the means which medicine affords, to 
prevent the least ill consequence from its reception. 
In the most southern departments of France, there is a 
species of lycosa, which differs very little from the tarantula 
of Italy, and which has even been confounded with it by 
Olivier. He has studied its habits, and has published the 
result of his observations in the fourth volume of the Natural 
History of the Encyclopedie Metliodique . It strengthens 
with a fine and compact web, the interior surface of its cell, 
and its eggs are in a silken cocoon. This cell consists of a 
perpendicular cylindrical cavity, which it hollows in dry and 
uncultivated soils. Its dimensions augment progressively 
with the age, and often according to the bulk of the indi- 
vidual. It usually places itself at the entrance of this, and 
as soon as it perceives an insect, it darts upon it with pro- 
digious swiftness, seizes it w r ith its forceps, carries it to the 
bottom of its dwelling, and devours it almost entirely, or leaves 
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