The sting of the bee and the lancet of the gnat, although fashioned of very different materials, bear a close likeness in their mechanism. In each case the piercing organ is, in the first place, a gouge-like weapon which prepares the way for more delicate lancets. But in the spider we find a very different piece of machinery for the injection of the poison. It is formed by a pair of peculiarly modified legs which act as jaws, and are armed each with a powerful claw, at the tip of which, as in the poison-fang of the viper, is a small hole. Out of this hole a drop of poison oozes when the prey is seized, and this has the effect of paralysing the victim. The poison is formed in a curious bag, or 'gland' (G.L), which communicates with the claw by means of a long tube or duct.

Many people feel a remarkable repugnance or even dread for spiders. This, in many cases at least, is due to the supposed venom in their bite. Yet, except the famous 'Tarantula,' no spiders really inflict a painful wound. Tales of fearsome black spiders are common enough. One of the spiders known as 'line weavers' is reputed to have a very poisonous bite. To test the truth of this, one authority on spiders repeatedly allowed himself to be bitten, yet suffered no inconvenience! In the early and barbarous days of medical practice, a spider was frequently applied to the wrists of patients suffering from fever.

Even the virulence of the dreaded Tarantula's bite has been greatly exaggerated. It was supposed to cause the disease known as Tarantism: the victim was seized with a mad desire to dance. The mania, while it lasted, was accompanied with leaping, contortions, gesticulations, and wild cries, until finally the fit of hysteria, for such it was, wore itself out. The methods of treatment were many and curious. One of the most favoured was to bury the patient up to the neck! But the dulcet strains of music were believed to be the most powerful of all cures, and certain peculiar tunes came to be regarded as especially effective, and hence became known as Tarantella!

Parts of India now desert are said to have been deprived of their inhabitants through the dread caused by certain huge spiders known as the Galeodes. Their bite is without doubt extremely painful, and may cause violent headache, fainting fits, or even temporary paralysis. Camels and sheep are sometimes so severely bitten by these spiders that death results.

Occasionally the spider catches a Tartar, for wasps and bees now and again get entangled in the web spread for more helpless victims. Rushing out in a blind fury, the spider closes with his captive, and then follows a fight to the death. Sometimes the spider wins, but as often as not the sting of his would-be victim is thrust home with deadly effect, for the soft and pulpy body of the spider offers a target not easily missed.

There is a saying that we should 'eat to live,' but the dragon-flies seem to have reversed this rule, for they appear almost to 'live to eat,' their appetites being enormous. This is especially true of the larval or infantile stages of growth, and the manner of capturing their prey is peculiar.

Readers of Chatterbox, who combine a love of natural history with a fondness for boating, have probably many a time watched the gauze-winged dragon-fly hawking for flies. But how many have realised that, below the surface of the stream, the coming generation of dragon-flies was waging a precisely similar war—a war, too, even more relentless? The full-fledged dragon-fly cannot bring himself to venture out, even to eat, unless the sun be shining; but the budding dragon-fly has not yet learnt to be so particular, and hunts incessantly, be the weather fine or wet. The apparatus by which his prey is captured cannot, however, be easily described. The mouth of an insect is made up of many separate parts, and that which in other insects forms the 'under-lip,' is in the young dragon-fly peculiarly modified to form what is known as the 'mask.' This remarkable piece of apparatus may be compared to a pair of nippers mounted on a jointed and freely movable handle. When not in use these nippers are kept folded up close under the head; but as soon as prey comes within reach, the nippers flash out, and the victim is seized and brought to the powerful jaws, where it is rapidly torn to pieces.

The weapons of offence of the spider and dragon-fly larva differ in one important particular from those of the bee and the water-bug, and similar insects: the former are used for the capture of victims intended as food, whilst the latter are employed, in the case of the bee, for attack or defence; and in the case of the water-bug for robbing the animal or plant of a small and quite insignificant quantity of its blood, or sap, as the case may be.

W. P. Pycraft, A.L.S., F.Z.S.