Nevertheless, I had the courage to start afresh, this time on a Mole caught ravaging a bed of lettuces.  There was a danger lest my captive, with his famished stomach, should leave things in doubt, if we had to keep him for a few days.  He might die not of his wound, but of inanition, if I did not succeed in giving him suitable food, fairly plentiful and dispensed at fairly frequent intervals.  In that case, I ran a risk of ascribing to the poison what might well be the result of starvation.  I must therefore begin by finding out if it was possible for me to keep the Mole alive in captivity.  The animal was put into a large receptacle from which it could not get out and fed on a varied diet of insects—­Beetles, Grasshoppers, especially Cicadae {15}—­which it crunched up with an excellent appetite.  Twenty-four hours of this regimen convinced me that the Mole was making the best of the bill of fare and taking kindly to his captivity.

I make the Tarantula bite him at the tip of the snout.  When replaced in his cage, the Mole keeps on scratching his nose with his broad paws.  The thing seems to burn, to itch.  Henceforth, less and less of the provision of Cicadae is consumed; on the evening of the following day, it is refused 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.