wind, might end by obstructing it; lastly, she uses it as a snare by offering the Flies and other insects whereon she feeds a projecting point to settle on.  Who shall tell us all the wiles employed by this clever and daring huntress?

‘Let us now say something about my rather diverting Tarantula-hunts.  The best season for them is the months of May and June.  The first time that I lighted on this Spider’s burrows and discovered that they were inhabited by seeing her come to a point on the first floor of her dwelling—the elbow which I have mentioned—I thought that I must attack her by main force and pursue her relentlessly in order to capture her; I spent whole hours in opening up the trench with a knife a foot long by two inches wide, without meeting the Tarantula.  I renewed the operation in other burrows, always with the same want of success; I really wanted a pickaxe to achieve my object, but I was too far from any kind of house.  I was obliged to change my plan of attack and I resorted to craft.  Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention.

‘It occurred to me to take a stalk, topped with its spikelet, by way of a bait, and to rub and move it gently at the orifice of the burrow.  I soon saw that the Lycosa’s attention and desires were roused.  Attracted by the bait, she came with measured steps towards the spikelet.  I withdrew it in good time a little outside the hole, so as not to leave the animal time for reflexion; and the Spider suddenly, with a rush, darted out of her dwelling, of which I hastened to close the entrance.  The Tarantula, bewildered by her unaccustomed liberty, was very awkward in evading my attempts at capture; and I compelled her to enter a paper bag, which I closed without delay.

‘Sometimes, suspecting the trap, or perhaps less pressed by hunger, she would remain coy and motionless, at a slight distance from the threshold, which she did not think it opportune to cross.  Her patience outlasted mine.  In that case, I employed the following tactics: after making sure of the Lycosa’s position and the direction of the tunnel, I drove a knife into it on the slant, so as to take the animal in the rear and cut off its retreat by stopping up the burrow.  I seldom failed in my attempt, especially in soil that was not stony.  In these critical circumstances, either the Tarantula took fright and deserted her lair for the open, or else she stubbornly remained with her back to the blade.  I would then give a sudden jerk to the knife, which flung both the earth and the Lycosa to a distance, enabling me to capture her.  By employing this hunting-method, I sometimes caught as many as fifteen Tarantulae within the space of an hour.

‘In a few cases, in which the Tarantula was under no misapprehension as to the trap which I was setting for her, I was not a little surprised, when I pushed the stalk far enough down to twist it round her hiding-place, to see her play with the spikelet more or less contemptuously and push it away with her legs, without troubling to retreat to the back of her lair.

‘The Apulian peasants, according to Baglivi’s {4} account, also hunt the Tarantula by imitating the humming of an insect with an oat-stalk at the entrance to her burrow.  I quote the passage:

‘“Ruricolæ nostri quando eas captare volunt, ad illorum latibula accedunt, tenuisque avenacæ fistulæ sonum, apum murmuri non absimilem, modulantur.  Quo audito, ferox exit Tarentula ut muscas vel alia hujus modi insecta, quorum murmur esse putat, captat; captatur tamen ista a rustico insidiatore.” {5}

‘The Tarantula, so dreadful at first sight, especially when we are filled with the idea that her bite is dangerous, so fierce in appearance, is nevertheless quite easy to tame, as I have often found by experiment.

‘On the 7th of May 1812, while at Valencia, in Spain, I caught a fair-sized male Tarantula, without hurting him, and imprisoned him in a glass jar, with a paper cover in which I cut a trap-door.  At the bottom of the jar I put a paper bag, to serve as his habitual residence.  I placed the jar on a table in my bedroom, so as to have him under frequent observation.  He soon grew accustomed to captivity and ended by becoming so familiar that he would come and take from my fingers the live Fly which I gave him.  After killing his victim with the fangs of his mandibles, he was not satisfied, like most Spiders, to suck her head: he chewed her whole body, shoving it piecemeal into his mouth with his palpi, after which he threw up the masticated teguments and swept them away from his lodging.

‘Having finished his meal, he nearly always made his toilet, which consisted in brushing his palpi and mandibles, both inside and out, with his front tarsi.  After that, he resumed his air of motionless gravity.  The evening and the night were his time for taking his walks abroad.  I often heard him scratching the paper of the bag.  These habits confirm the opinion, which I have already expressed elsewhere, that most Spiders have the faculty of seeing by day and night, like cats.

‘On the 28th of June, my Tarantula cast his skin.  It was his last moult and did not perceptibly alter either the colour of his attire or the dimensions of his body.  On the 14th of July, I had to leave Valencia; and I stayed away until the 23rd.  During this time, the Tarantula fasted; I found him looking quite well on my return.  On the 20th of August, I again left for a nine days’ absence, which my prisoner bore without food and without detriment to his health.  On the 1st of October, I once more deserted the Tarantula, leaving him without provisions.  On the 21st, I was fifty miles from Valencia and, as I intended to remain there, I sent a servant to fetch him.  I was sorry to learn that he was not found in the jar, and I never heard what became of him.

‘I will end my observations on the Tarantulae with a short description of a curious fight between those animals.  One day, when I had had a successful hunt after these Lycosae, I picked out two full-grown and very powerful males and brought them together in a wide jar, in order to enjoy the sight of a combat to the death.  After walking round the arena several times, to try and avoid each other, they were not slow in placing themselves in a warlike attitude, as though at a given signal.  I saw them, to my surprise, take their distances and sit up solemnly on their hind-legs, so as mutually to present the shield of their chests to each other.  After watching them face to face like that for two minutes, during which they had doubtless provoked each other by glances that escaped my own, I saw them fling themselves upon each other at the same time, twisting their legs round each other and obstinately struggling to bite each other with the fangs of the mandibles.  Whether from fatigue or from convention, the combat was suspended; there was a few seconds’ truce; and each athlete moved away and resumed his threatening posture.  This circumstance reminded me that, in the strange fights between cats, there are also suspensions of hostilities.  But the contest was soon renewed between my two Tarantulae with increased fierceness.  One of them, after holding victory in the balance for a while, was at last thrown and received a mortal wound in the head.  He became the prey of the conqueror, who tore open his skull and devoured it.  After this curious duel, I kept the victorious Tarantula alive for several weeks.’

My district does not boast the ordinary Tarantula, the Spider whose habits have been described above by the Wizard of the Landes; but it possesses an equivalent in the shape of the Black-bellied Tarantula, or