in a fainting fit, caused by the sudden reaction in his feelings. The
snake that he killed was of a poisonous kind,--the tiger snake, which
has already been mentioned. When stretched out to its full length, it
measured very nearly five feet.

"They have scorpions and centipedes in Australia, and their bite is just
as deadly as that of the same creatures elsewhere. They have a black
spider about as large as a pea,--black all over except a red spot on its
back,--which is found in decaying logs, and, unhappily, has a fondness
for living in houses. It is aggressive in its nature, as it does not
wait to be disturbed before making an attack, and it has been known to
cross a room towards where a person was sitting in order to bite him.
Its bite is as bad as that of the scorpion or centipede. Sometimes its
victims are permanently paralyzed for the rest of their lives, or become
hopeless lunatics, and, not infrequently, death results from this
spider's bite.

"One gentleman told me how he was once bitten by one of these spiders on
the calf of the leg. He immediately cut out the wound and injected some
ammonia close by the side of it, but in spite of these precautions he
suffered intense pains in the leg for several days. The limb swelled to
twice its natural size, and became as soft as putty. At the spot where
the wound was a suppurating sore formed and it discharged for several
months. He fully expected that amputation would be necessary, and the
doctor whom he called to attend him said the chances were five to one
that he would lose the leg altogether. Greatly to his and the doctor's
surprise and delight, he managed to save it, but for fully a year after
the wound had healed the limb did not resume its normal size, and he
suffered frequent pains like rheumatism.

"'You will naturally conclude,' said our friend, 'that as we have
spiders here we ought to have flies, and we have them in sufficient
abundance to prevent life from becoming monotonous. They are worse in
the interior than on the coast; in the latter region they are only
troublesome during the autumn months, while for the rest of the year
they are not at all numerous, or may be absent altogether; but in the
interior they are always bad, the only difference being that they are
worse at some times than at others. In parts of the interior everybody
wears a veil when going about the country, and it is often necessary to
do so while in the house. On some of the interior p