I at once remove the Dragon-fly.  She is dead, really and truly dead.  Laid upon my table and left alone for twenty-four hours, she makes not the slightest movement.  A prick of which my lens cannot see the marks, so sharp-pointed are the Epeira’s weapons, was enough, with a little insistence, to kill the powerful animal.  Proportionately, the Rattlesnake, the Horned Viper, the Trigonocephalus and other ill-famed serpents produce less paralysing effects upon their victims.

And these Epeirae, so terrible to insects, I am able to handle without any fear.  My skin does not suit them.  If I persuaded them to bite me, what would happen to me?  Hardly anything.  We have more cause to dread the sting of a nettle than the dagger which is fatal to Dragon-flies.  The same virus acts differently upon this organism and that, is formidable here and quite mild there.  What kills the insect may easily be harmless to us.  Let us not, however, generalize too far.  The Narbonne Lycosa, that other enthusiastic insect-huntress, would make us pay clearly if we attempted to take liberties with her.

It is not uninteresting to watch the Epeira at dinner.  I light upon one, the Banded Epeira, at the moment, about three o’clock in the afternoon, when she has captured a Locust.  Planted in the centre of the web, on her resting-floor, she attacks the venison at the joint of a haunch.  There is no movement, not even of the mouth-parts, as far as I am able to discover.  The mouth lingers, close-applied, at the point originally bitten.  There are no intermittent mouthfuls, with the mandibles moving backwards and forwards.  It is a sort of continuous kiss.

I visit my Epeira at intervals.  The mouth does not change its place.  I visit her for the last time at nine o’clock in the evening.  Matters stand exactly as they did:  after six hours’ consumption, the mouth is still sucking at the lower end of the right haunch.  The fluid contents of the victim are transferred to the ogress’ belly, I know not how.

Next morning, the Spider is still at table.  I take away her dish.  Naught remains of the Locust but his skin, hardly altered in shape, but utterly drained and perforated in several places.  The method, therefore, was changed during the night.  To extract the non-fluent residue, the viscera and muscles, the stiff cuticle had to be tapped here, there and elsewhere, after which the tattered husk, placed bodily in the press of the mandibles, would have been chewed, rechewed and finally reduced to a pill, which the sated Spider throws up.  This would have been the end of the victim, had I not taken it away before the time.

Whether she wound or kill, the Epeira bites her captive somewhere or other, no matter where.  This is an excellent method on her part, because of the variety of the game that comes her way.  I see her accepting with equal readiness whatever chance may send her:  Butterflies and Dragon-flies, Flies and Wasps, small Dung-beetles and Locusts.  If I offer her a Mantis, a Bumble-bee, an Anoxia—­the equivalent of the common Cockchafer—­and other dishes probably unknown to her race, she accepts all and any, large and small, thin-skinned and horny-skinned, that which goes afoot and that which takes winged flight.  She is omnivorous, she preys on everything, down to her own kind, should the occasion offer.