his front tarsi.  After that, he resumed his air of motionless gravity.  The evening and the night were his time for taking his walks abroad.  I often heard him scratching the paper of the bag.  These habits confirm the opinion, which I have already expressed elsewhere, that most Spiders have the faculty of seeing by day and night, like cats.

’On the 28th of June, my Tarantula cast his skin.  It was his last moult and did not perceptibly alter either the colour of his attire or the dimensions of his body.  On the 14th of July, I had to leave Valencia; and I stayed away until the 23rd.  During this time, the Tarantula fasted; I found him looking quite well on my return.  On the 20th of August, I again left for a nine days’ absence, which my prisoner bore without food and without detriment to his health.  On the 1st of October, I once more deserted the Tarantula, leaving him without provisions.  On the 21st, I was fifty miles from Valencia and, as I intended to remain there, I sent a servant to fetch him.  I was sorry to learn that he was not found in the jar, and I never heard what became of him.

’I will end my observations on the Tarantulae with a short description of a curious fight between those animals.  One day, when I had had a successful hunt after these Lycosae, I picked out two full-grown and very powerful males and brought them together in a wide jar, in order to enjoy the sight of a combat to the death.  After walking round the arena several times, to try and avoid each other, they were not slow in placing themselves in a warlike attitude, as though at a given signal.  I saw them, to my surprise, take their distances and sit up solemnly on their hind-legs, so as mutually to present the shield of their chests to each other.  After watching them face to face like that for two minutes, during which they had doubtless provoked each other by glances that escaped my own, I saw them fling themselves upon each other at the same time, twisting their legs round each other and obstinately struggling to bite each other with the fangs of the mandibles.  Whether from fatigue or from convention, the combat was suspended; there was a few seconds’ truce; and each athlete moved away and resumed his threatening posture.  This circumstance reminded me that, in the strange fights between cats, there are also suspensions of hostilities.  But the contest was soon renewed between my two 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