emely painful, and may
cause violent headache, fainting fits, or even temporary paralysis.
Camels and sheep are sometimes so severely bitten by these spiders that
death results.

Occasionally the spider catches a Tartar, for wasps and bees now and
again get entangled in the web spread for more helpless victims. Rushing
out in a blind fury, the spider closes with his captive, and then
follows a fight to the death. Sometimes the spider wins, but as often as
not the sting of his would-be victim is thrust home with deadly effect,
for the soft and pulpy body of the spider offers a target not easily
missed.

* * * * *

There is a saying that we should 'eat to live,' but the dragon-flies
seem to have reversed this rule, for they appear almost to 'live to
eat,' their appetites being enormous. This is especially true of the
larval or infantile stages of growth, and the manner of capturing their
prey is peculiar.

Readers of _Chatterbox_, who combine a love of natural history with a
fondness for boating, have probably many a time watched the gauze-winged
dragon-fly hawking for flies. But how many have realised that, below the
surface of the stream, the coming generation of dragon-flies was waging
a precisely similar war--a war, too, even more relentless? The
full-fledged dragon-fly cannot bring himself to venture out, even to
eat, unless the sun be shining; but the budding dragon-fly has not yet
learnt to be so particular, and hunts incessantly, be the weather fine
or wet. The apparatus by which his prey is captured cannot, however, be
easily described. The mouth of an insect is made up of many separate
parts, and that which in other insects forms the 'under-lip,' is in the
young dragon-fly peculiarly modified to form what is known as the
'mask.' This remarkable piece of apparatus may be compared to a pair of
nippers mounted on a jointed and freely movable handle. When not in use
these nippers are kept folded up close under the head; but as soon as
prey comes within reach, the nippers flash out, and the victim is seized
and brought to the powerful jaws, where it is rapidly torn to pieces.

The weapons of offence of the spider and dragon-fly larva differ in one
important particular from those of the bee and the water-bug, and
similar insects: the former are used for the capture of victims intended
as food, whilst the latter are employed, in the case of the bee, for
attack or defence; and in the