this spider are very acute. The latter is
exercised by the palpi and the tips of the legs, especially the first
pair, but no ear has yet been discovered; neither is anything known of
the organs of taste and smell, or even whether the insect possesses
these senses at all.

I ought before this to have anticipated and answered a question which
nine out of ten, perhaps, of my readers have already asked themselves,
"Do not spiders bite? and is not their bite poisonous, nay, at times,
deadly even to man?" The answer is, in brief, Yes, spiders do bite,
probably all of them, if provoked and so confined that they cannot
escape; though only a few tropical species can be said to seek of their
own accord an opportunity for attacking man, or any creature larger than
the insects that form their natural prey. Even the _Nephila plumipes_,
which, it has been intimated, is "Christian in its disposition, and
well-behaved beyond most of its kind," will readily bite, if it is held
in the fingers and anything is put to its jaws. But that is nothing. So
would you, most gentle reader, if a great giant pinched you between his
thumb and finger, and held your hands and feet and head; and if, too,
like our spider, you could not see enough to distinguish friends from
foes. Spiders, then, will bite. But to the second part of the inquiry
our answer must be less positive. They have a very bad name; but much of
this is due to their grim and forbidding aspect, and their bloody trade
of trapping and eating poor little insects. It is to be remembered that
there are very few, if any, medical reports of injuries from the bites
of spiders, and that the accounts of such cases occurring in the
newspapers consist in great measure of inference, and either make no
mention of the offender at all, or merely speak of a little black or
gray spider being found in the vicinity. A number of experiments have
been made in England to ascertain the effect of the bite of the larger
geometrical spiders upon the experimenter himself, upon other spiders,
and upon common insects; and the conclusion was, that it produces no
greater effect than the prick of a pin, or any other injury of equal
extent and severity; while the speedy death of its victim is ascribed to
the spider's sucking its juices, rather than to any poison instilled
into the wound. But these experiments, though somewhat reassuring, are
not conclusive; for they were tried only on one person, and people vary
much in