when she climbs boldly to the aperture of her dwelling, she is admitted
to the tourney; otherwise, she is refused. The bottle, baited with a
Carpenter-bee, is placed upside down over the door of one of the elect.
The Bee buzzes gravely in her glass bell; the huntress mounts from the
recesses of the cave; she is on the threshold, but inside; she looks; she
waits. I also wait. The quarters, the half-hours pass: nothing. The
Spider goes down again: she has probably judged the attempt too
dangerous. I move to a second, a third, a fourth burrow: still nothing;
the huntress refuses to leave her lair.

Fortune at last smiles upon my patience, which has been heavily tried by
all these prudent retreats and particularly by the fierce heat of the dog-
days. A Spider suddenly rushes from her hole: she has been rendered
warlike, doubtless, by prolonged abstinence. The tragedy that happens
under the cover of the bottle lasts for but the twinkling of an eye. It
is over: the sturdy Carpenter-bee is dead. Where did the murderess
strike her? That is easily ascertained: the Tarantula has not let go;
and her fangs are planted in the nape of the neck. The assassin has the
knowledge which I suspected: she has made for the essentially vital
centre, she has stung the insect's cervical ganglia with her
poison-fangs. In short, she has bitten the only point a lesion in which
produces sudden death. I was delighted with this murderous skill, which
made amends for the blistering which my skin received in the sun.

Once is not custom: one swallow does not make a summer. Is what I have
just seen due to accident or to premeditation? I turn to other Lycosae.
Many, a deal too many for my patience, stubbornly refuse to dart from
their haunts in order to attack the Carpenter-bee. The formidable quarry
is too much for their daring. Shall not hunger, which brings the wolf
from the wood, also bring the Tarantula out of her hole? Two, apparently