refuses to leave her lair.

Fortune at last smiles upon my patience, which has been heavily tried by all these prudent retreats and particularly by the fierce heat of the dog-days.  A Spider suddenly rushes from her hole: she has been rendered warlike, doubtless, by prolonged abstinence.  The tragedy that happens under the cover of the bottle lasts for but the twinkling of an eye.  It is over: the sturdy Carpenter-bee is dead.  Where did the murderess strike her?  That is easily ascertained: the Tarantula has not let go; and her fangs are planted in the nape of the neck.  The assassin has the knowledge which I suspected: she has made for the essentially vital centre, she has stung the insect’s cervical ganglia with her poison-fangs.  In short, she has bitten the only point a lesion in which produces sudden death.  I was delighted with this murderous skill, which made amends for the blistering which my skin received in the sun.

Once is not custom: one swallow does not make a summer.  Is what I have just seen due to accident or to premeditation?  I turn to other Lycosae.  Many, a deal too many for my patience, stubbornly refuse to dart from their haunts in order to attack the Carpenter-bee.  The formidable quarry is too much for their daring.  Shall not hunger, which brings the wolf from the wood, also bring the Tarantula out of her hole?  Two, apparently more famished than the rest, do at last pounce upon the Bee and repeat the scene of murder before my eyes.  The prey, again bitten in the neck, exclusively in the neck, dies on the instant.  Three murders, perpetrated in my presence under identical conditions, represent the fruits of my experiment pursued, on two occasions, from eight o’clock in the morning until twelve midday.

I had seen enough.  The quick insect-killer had taught me her trade as had the paralyzer {10} before her: she had shown me that she is thoroughly versed in the art of the butcher of the Pampas. {11}  The Tarantula is an accomplished desnucador.  It remained to me to confirm the open-air experiment with experiments in the privacy of my study.  I therefore got together a menagerie of these poisonous Spiders, so as to judge of the virulence of their venom and its effect according to the part of the body injured by the fangs.  A dozen bottles and test-tubes received the prisoners, whom I captured by the methods known to the reader.  To one inclined to scream at the sight of a Spider, my study, filled with odious Lycosae, would have presented a very uncanny appearance.

Though the Tarantula scorns or rather fears to attack an adversary placed in her presence in a bottle, she scarcely hesitates to bite what is thrust beneath her fangs.  I take her by the thorax with my forceps and present to her mouth the animal which I wish stung.  Forthwith, if the Spider be not already tired by experiments, the fangs are raised and inserted.  I first tried the effects of the bite upon the Carpenter-bee.  When struck in the neck, the Bee succumbs at once.  It was the lightning death which I witnessed on the threshold of the burrows.  When struck in the abdomen and then placed in a large bottle that leaves its movements free, the insect seems, at first, to have suffered no serious injury.  It flutters about and buzzes.  But half an hour has not elapsed before death is imminent.  The insect lies motionless upon its back or side.  At most, a few movements of the legs, a slight pulsation of the belly, continuing till the morrow, proclaim that life has not yet entirely departed.  Then everything ceases: the Carpenter-bee is a corpse.

The importance of this experiment compels our attention.  When stung in the neck, the powerful Bee dies on the spot; and the Spider has not to fear the dangers of a desperate struggle.  Stung elsewhere, in the abdomen, the insect is capable, for nearly half an hour, of making use of its dart, its mandibles, its legs; and woe to the Lycosa whom the stiletto reaches.  I have seen some who, stabbed in the mouth while biting close to the sting, died of the wound within the twenty-four hours.  That dangerous prey, therefore, requires instantaneous death, produced by the injury to the nerve-centres of the neck; otherwise, the hunter’s life would often be in jeopardy.

The Grasshopper order supplied me with a second series of victims: Green Grasshoppers as long as one’s finger, large-headed Locusts, Ephippigerae. {12}  The same result follows when these are bitten in the neck: lightning death.  When injured elsewhere, notably in the abdomen, the subject of the experiment resists for some time.  I have seen a Grasshopper, bitten in the belly, cling firmly for fifteen hours to the smooth, upright wall of the glass bell that constituted his prison.  At last, he dropped off and died.  Where the Bee, that delicate organism, succumbs in less than half an hour, the Grasshopper, coarse ruminant that he is, resists for a whole day.  Put aside these differences, caused by unequal degrees of organic sensitiveness, and we sum up as follows: when bitten by the Tarantula in the neck, an insect, chosen from among the largest, dies on the spot; when bitten elsewhere, it perishes also, but after a lapse of time which varies considerably in the different entomological orders.

This explains the long hesitation of the Tarantula, so wearisome to the experimenter when he presents to her, at the entrance to the burrow, a rich, but dangerous prey.  The majority refuse to fling themselves upon the Carpenter-bee.  The fact is that a quarry of this kind cannot be seized recklessly: the huntress who missed her stroke by biting at random would do so at the risk of her life.  The nape of the neck alone possesses the desired vulnerability.  The adversary must be nipped there and no elsewhere.  Not to floor her at once would mean to irritate her and make her more dangerous than ever.  The Spider is well aware of this.  In the safe shelter of her threshold, therefore, prepared to beat a quick retreat if necessary, she watches for the favourable moment; she waits for the big Bee to face her, when the neck is easily grabbed.  If this condition of success offer, she leaps out and acts; if not, weary of the violent evolutions of the quarry, she retires indoors.  And that, no doubt, is why it took me two sittings of four hours apiece to witness three assassinations.

Formerly, instructed by the paralysing Wasps, I had myself tried to produce paralysis by injecting a drop of ammonia into the thorax of those insects, such as Weevils, Buprestes, {13} and Dung-beetles, whose compact nervous system assists this physiological operation.  I showed myself a ready pupil to my masters’ teaching and used to paralyze a Buprestis or a Weevil almost as well as a Cerceris {14} could have done.  Why should I not to-day imitate that expert butcher, the Tarantula?  With the point of a fine needle, I inject a tiny drop of ammonia at the base of the skull of a Carpenter-bee or a Grasshopper.  The insect succumbs then and there, without any other movement than wild convulsions.  When attacked by the acrid fluid, the cervical ganglia cease to do their work; and death ensues.  Nevertheless, this death is not immediate; the