Tarantulae with increased fierceness. One of them, after holding
victory in the balance for a while, was at last thrown and received a
mortal wound in the head. He became the prey of the conqueror, who
tore open his skull and devoured it. After this curious duel, I kept
the victorious Tarantula alive for several weeks.'

My district does not boast the ordinary Tarantula, the Spider whose
habits have been described above by the Wizard of the Landes; but it
possesses an equivalent in the shape of the Black-bellied Tarantula, or
Narbonne Lycosa, half the size of the other, clad in black velvet on the
lower surface, especially under the belly, with brown chevrons on the
abdomen and grey and white rings around the legs. Her favourite home is
the dry, pebbly ground, covered with sun-scorched thyme. In my _harmas_
{6} laboratory there are quite twenty of this Spider's burrows. Rarely
do I pass by one of these haunts without giving a glance down the pit
where gleam, like diamonds, the four great eyes, the four telescopes, of
the hermit. The four others, which are much smaller, are not visible at
that depth.

Would I have greater riches, I have but to walk a hundred yards from my
house, on the neighbouring plateau, once a shady forest, to-day a dreary
solitude where the Cricket browses and the Wheat-ear flits from stone to
stone. The love of lucre has laid waste the land. Because wine paid
handsomely, they pulled up the forest to plant the vine. Then came the
Phylloxera, the vine-stocks perished and the once green table-land is now
no more than a desolate stretch where a few tufts of hardy grasses sprout
among the pebbles. This waste-land is the Lycosa's paradise: in an
hour's time, if need were, I should discover a hundred burrows within a
limited range.