THE Tarantula has the breast and belly of an ash colour; the legs are likewise ash coloured, with blackish rings on the under part two of its eyes are larger than the others, they are red and placed in the front; four other eyes are placed in a transverse direction towards the mouth. It is a native of Italy, Cyprus, Barbary, and the East Indies. It lives in bare fields, where the lands are fallow, but not very hard. Its

dwelling is about four inches deep, and half an inch wide; at the bottom it is curved, and there the insect sits in wet weather, and cuts its way out, if water gains upon it. It weaves a net at the mouth of the hole. These Spiders do not live quite a year. In July they shed their skin. They lay about seven hundred and thirty eggs, which are hatched in the spring: but the parent does not live to see her progeny, as she expires early in the winter. The ichneumon fly is their greatest enemy.

The bite of the Tarantula is said to occasion an inflammation in the part, which in a few hours brings on sickness, difficulty of breathing, and universal faintness; the same symptoms return annually, in some cases, for several years; and at last terminate in death. Music, it has been pretended, is the only cure. Such are the circumstances that have been generally related, and long credited, concerning the bite of this animal now generally agreed, that no such effects attend this bite and that the exhibitions of dancing to music by persons pretending to be so affected, are only villainous deceptions

But it is

to excite the compassion and extract the money of the spectators.

VESPA-WASP.

THE Common Wasp, or Vespa vulgaris, is known to every one. The nest of this insect is a highly curious structure; and is prepared beneath the surface of some dry bank, or other convenient situation. Its shape is that of an upright oval, often measuring ten or twelve inches at least in diameter: it consist of several horizontal stages or stories of hexagonal cells, the interstices of each story being connected at intervals by upright pillars and the exterior surface of the nest consists of a great many layers or pieces disposed over each other in such a manner as best to secure the interior cavity from the effects of cold and moisture; the whole nest, comprising both walls and cells, is composed of a substance very much resembling the coarse kinds of whitish brown paper, and consists of the fibres of various dry vege

table substances agglutinated by a tenacious fluid discharged from the mouths of the insects during their operations. The female wasps deposit their eggs in the cells, one in each cell appropriated for that purpose: from these are hatched the larvæ or maggots, which bear a near resemblance to those of bees they are fed by the labouring wasps with a coarse kind of honey, and when arrived at their full size, close up their respective cells with a fine tissue of silken filaments, and after a certain period emerge in their complete or perfect form. The male insect, like the bee, is destitute of a sting; the society, or swarm, of the common wasp, consists of a vast number of neutral or labouring insects, a much smaller number of males, and still fewer females. They do not, like bees, prepare and lay up a store of honey for winter use; but the few which survive the season of their birth, remain torpid during the colder months. Wasps in general are both carnivorous, and frugivorous.

A highly elegant Wasps nest is sometimes seen during the summer season attached or hanging by its base to some straw, or other

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projecting substance from the upper part of buildings or out-houses. It does not much exceed the size of an egg, but is of a more globular form, and consists of several concentric bells, with considerable intervals between each, the interior alone being entire, and furnished with a small round orifice: the rest reaching only about two-thirds from the base of the nest. In the centre of the complete or intire bell, is situated the congeries of cells, built round a small central pillar attached to the base: the cells are not very numerous, and their orifices look downward.

Sagacity of the Wasp.

DR. DARWIN relates the following circumstance, which fell under his own eye, and shows the power of reasoning in a Wasp, as it is exercised among men :

"A Wasp on a gravel walk had caught a fly, nearly as large as himself;-kneeling on the ground, I observed him," says the doctor, "separate the tail and the head from the body part, to which the wings are at

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