altogether. About thirty-six hours after being bitten, the Mole
dies during the night and certainly not from inanition, for there are
still half a dozen live Cicadae in the receptacle, as well as a few
Beetles.

The bite of the Black-bellied Tarantula is therefore dangerous to other
animals than insects: it is fatal to the Sparrow, it is fatal to the
Mole. Up to what point are we to generalize? I do not know, because my
enquiries extended no further. Nevertheless, judging from the little
that I saw, it appears to me that the bite of this Spider is not an
accident which man can afford to treat lightly. This is all that I have
to say to the doctors.

To the philosophical entomologists I have something else to say: I have
to call their attention to the consummate knowledge of the
insect-killers, which vies with that of the paralyzers. I speak of
insect-killers in the plural, for the Tarantula must share her deadly art
with a host of other Spiders, especially with those who hunt without
nets. These insect-killers, who live on their prey, strike the game dead
instantaneously by stinging the nerve-centres of the neck; the
paralyzers, on the other hand, who wish to keep the food fresh for their
larvae, destroy the power of movement by stinging the game in the other
nerve-centres. Both of them attack the nervous chain, but they select
the point according to the object to be attained. If death be desired,
sudden death, free from danger to the huntress, the insect is attacked in
the neck; if mere paralysis be required, the neck is respected and the
lower segments--sometimes one alone, sometimes three, sometimes all or
nearly all, according to the special organization of the victim--receive
the dagger-thrust.

Even the paralyzers, at least some of them, are acquainted with the
immense vital importance of the nerve-centres of the neck. We have seen
the Hairy Ammophila munching the caterpillar's brain, the Languedocian
Sphex munching the brain of the Ephippigera, with the object of inducing
a passing torpor. But they simply squeeze the brain and do even this
with a wise discretion; they are careful not to drive their sting into
this fundamental centre of life; not one of them ever thinks of doing so,
for the result would be a corpse which the larva would despise. The
Spider, on the other hand, inserts her double dirk there and there alone;
any elsewhere it would inflict a wound likely to increase resistance
through ir