_, {1}
first observed by Leon Dufour in the Catalonian mountains; according to
them, her bite would lead to serious accidents. The Italians have
bestowed a bad reputation on the Tarantula, who produces convulsions and
frenzied dances in the person stung by her. To cope with 'tarantism,'
the name given to the disease that follows on the bite of the Italian
Spider, you must have recourse to music, the only efficacious remedy, so
they tell us. Special tunes have been noted, those quickest to afford
relief. There is medical choreography, medical music. And have we not
the tarentella, a lively and nimble dance, bequeathed to us perhaps by
the healing art of the Calabrian peasant?

Must we take these queer things seriously or laugh at them? From the
little that I have seen, I hesitate to pronounce an opinion. Nothing
tells us that the bite of the Tarantula may not provoke, in weak and very
impressionable people, a nervous disorder which music will relieve;
nothing tells us that a profuse perspiration, resulting from a very
energetic dance, is not likely to diminish the discomfort by diminishing
the cause of the ailment. So far from laughing, I reflect and enquire,
when the Calabrian peasant talks to me of his Tarantula, the Pujaud
reaper of his _Theridion lugubre_, the Corsican husbandman of his
Malmignatte. Those Spiders might easily deserve, at least partly, their
terrible reputation.

The most powerful Spider in my district, the Black-bellied Tarantula,
will presently give us something to think about, in this connection. It
is not my business to discuss a medical point, I interest myself
especially in matters of instinct; but, as the poison-fangs play a
leading part in the huntress' manoeuvres of war, I shall speak of their
effects by the way. The habits of the Tarantula, her ambushes, her
artifices, her methods of killing her prey: these constitute my subject.
I will preface it with an account by Leon Dufour, {2} one of those
accounts in which I used to delight and which did much to bring me into
closer touch with the insect. The Wizard of the Landes tells us of the
ordinary Tarantula, that of the Calabrias, observed by him in Spain:

'_Lycosa tarantula_ by preference inhabits open places, dry, arid,
uncultivated places, exposed to the sun. She lives generally--at
least when full-grown--in underground passages, regular burrows, which
she digs for herself. These burrows are cylindrical; they are