Page:Supplement to harvesting ants and trap-door spiders (IA supplementtoharv00mogg).pdf/64

 Lanzwert, writing in one of the local papers of "The Mygales or Ground Spiders," says, "the poisonous black tarantulas, so well known to naturalists, are extremely common in California, but only in places upland, or lowland which are very hot and dry. Their principal haunts are the San Joaquin valley, between the Calaveras and the Tejon. A similar species from the coast is not only smaller than the interior variety, but the colours are much deeper. They both make a curious habitation under the ground, composed of a glutinized, web-worked purse, about three inches long, and which is furnished with a tightly-fitting lid which they can open or shut at pleasure, and which is as cunning a piece of insect architecture as is to be found in nature. These ugly loathsome Californian spiders are often mentioned by thoughtless scribes as carrying no more danger than a common wasp, like the species of Italy, but it is well known that several persons, young and old, have lost their lives in this State from the bite of such tarantulas as are met with in our coast and interior country. Their enemy in the Tulare valley is an immense shining black wasp, fully an inch long, which will pounce upon them, and after a short battle drag the tarantula along in the most valiant style of heroic conquest. These interior taran-*