The Life of the Spider | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by David Price, email [email protected]
from the 1912 Hodder and Stoughton edition.

THE LIFE OF THE SPIDER
CHAPTER I
: THE BLACK-BELLIED TARANTULA

The Spider has a bad name: to most of us, she represents an odious,
noxious animal, which every one hastens to crush under foot. Against
this summary verdict the observer sets the beast's industry, its talent as
a weaver, its wiliness in the chase, its tragic nuptials and other
characteristics of great interest. Yes, the Spider is well worth studying,
apart from any scientific reasons; but she is said to be poisonous and
that is her crime and the primary cause of the repugnance wherewith
she inspires us. Poisonous, I agree, if by that we understand that the
animal is armed with two fangs which cause the immediate death of the
little victims which it catches; but there is a wide difference between
killing a Midge and harming a man. However immediate in its effects
upon the insect entangled in the fatal web, the Spider's poison is not
serious for us and causes less inconvenience than a Gnat-bite. That, at
least, is what we can safely say as regards the great majority of the
Spiders of our regions.
Nevertheless, a few are to be feared; and foremost among these is the
Malmignatte, the terror of the Corsican peasantry. I have seen her settle
in the furrows, lay out her web and rush boldly at insects larger than
herself; I have admired her garb of black velvet speckled with
carmine-red; above all, I have heard most disquieting stories told about
her. Around Ajaccio and Bonifacio, her bite is reputed very dangerous,
sometimes mortal. The countryman declares this for a fact and the
doctor does not always dare deny it. In the neighbourhood of Pujaud,

not far from Avignon, the harvesters speak with dread of Theridion
lugubre, {1} first observed by Leon Dufour in the Catalonian
mountains; according to them, her bite would lead to serious accidents.
The Italians have bestowed a bad reputation on the Tarantula, who
produces convulsions and frenzied dances in the person stung by her.
To cope with 'tarantism,' the name given to the disease that follows on
the bite of the Italian Spider, you must have recourse to music, the only
efficacious remedy, so they tell us. Special tunes have been noted,
those quickest to afford relief. There is medical choreography, medical
music. And have we not the tarentella, a lively and nimble dance,
bequeathed to us perhaps by the healing art of the Calabrian peasant?
Must we take these queer things seriously or laugh at them? From the
little that I have seen, I hesitate to pronounce an opinion. Nothing tells
us that the bite of the Tarantula may not provoke, in weak and very
impressionable people, a nervous disorder which music will relieve;
nothing tells us that a profuse perspiration, resulting from a very