The Black-Bellied Tarantula
insect lies motionless upon its back or side. At most, a few movements of the legs, a slight pulsation of the belly, continuing till the morrow, proclaim that life has not yet entirely departed. Then everything ceases: the Carpenter-bee is a corpse.
The importance of this experiment compels our attention. When stung in the neck, the powerful Bee dies on the spot; and the Spider has not to fear the dangers of a desperate struggle. Stung elsewhere, in the abdomen, the insect is capable, for nearly half an hour, of making use of its dart, its mandibles, its legs; and woe to the Lycosa whom the stiletto reaches. I have seen some who, stabbed in the mouth while biting close to the sting, died of the wound within the twenty-four hours. That dangerous prey, therefore, requires instantaneous death, produced by the injury to the nerve-centres of the neck; otherwise, the hunter's life would often be in jeopardy.
The Grasshopper order supplied me with a second series of victims: green Grasshoppers as long as one's finger, large-headed Locusts, Ephippigeræ.[1] The same result follows when these are bitten in the neck: light-
- ↑ A family of Grasshoppers.—Translator's Note.
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