Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/152

146 law, I have had a permit to walk. But fortunately the Dutch farmers have been interested in my work, and both adults and children have gladly taken bottles of spirits and collected on the farms. I have thus received many interesting specimens of spiders and Solifugæ. The farmers are pleased that so many new things have come out of their district, and are eager that it shall hold a front place in the great museum at the capital. A gray-headed old man handed me a bottle of spiders the other day with the remark 'Ik denk Hanover is nou zeker vóór' ('I expect Hanover is in front now'), and was much pleased when I told him how well Hanover was holding its own at Cape Town. The school children too, especially the girls, have done well. I have a couple of charming young friends who, in three weeks, sent me over three hundred specimens, some new and of great interest.

The result of the collecting up to the time of writing is, that, out of over two thousand arachnids I have sent to the museum (and excluding some spiders still undetermined), Dr. Purcell has found some twenty-one families of spiders, comprising more than a hundred species (the great majority of which are new to science), some ten species of Solifugæ (several of which are also new to science), four species of scorpions and one pseudo-scorpion.

One can not speak with any certainty yet, but it would almost seem that the high plateau has, largely, its own peculiar arachnid fauna, which, if it be so, is a very interesting fact.

But the interest does not lie wholly in the finding of an apparently new fauna and many new species of very rare genera; it is perhaps greatest in connection with what has been learned concerning spiders whose habits were thought to be known.

Before passing on to the arachnids, one or two interesting finds in other orders may be noted.

Among snakes, a small rare species (Prosymna sundevalli)—speckled, handsome and non-poisonous—is remarkable as having a hard snout for burrowing into the ground. Another snake is interesting from the manner of its capture. I was reading one evening inside the house and my wife was walking up and down the stoep after the heat of the day, when I heard her call anxiously. I went out and found the snake, which I killed two feet from our open door, for which it was making. A beautiful family are the Kous slangen (garter-snakes). They are very poisonous, but fortunately they are smallish and have very small teeth. The best specimen of these snakes I have caught is perhaps the most beautiful of them all. It is circled throughout its whole length with alternate bright red and deep black bands about half an inch wide. I nearly trod on it, and was warned by the most violent short hisses. I looked down at my feet, and there, standing up on a red iron-stone, was this enraged and lovely