It does not spin a web, but lives in a silk-lined hole six or eight inches deep, which it digs in the ground, and around the entrance to which, out of sticks and grass, it builds a turret or watch-tower, from which it can see its prey more readily than from the ground. These spider holes are common in the meadows of Maryland. In form and color the wolf-spider resembles the famous tarantula of southern Europe, the bite of which was supposed to cause the tarantella, or dancing madness; but it is as harmless as a butterfly, and indeed, Doctor Comstock, who is the authority on spiders, believes that no spiders in the Northern states are poisonous to man. [Illustration] THE CAST OFF OUTER SKELETON OF A WOLF-SPIDER (_Lycosa punctulata_, Hentz) This photograph is of the outer skeleton or shell of a small wolf-spider which I found clinging to the focusing cloth of my camera after it had been lying on the grass. With us the bony skeleton is internal and grows as we grow. With spiders the skeleton is a tough, leathery structure, which cannot change; so that the young, rapidly growing spider soon finds his shell too tight for him, and, like a crab, he bursts his shell and pulls his soft body from each leg and complicated cavity. This process seems marvelous, but is really comparatively simple when we realize that before the old shell is cast off it is loosened from the new skin by the moulting fluid which is excreted from glands opening through this new skin. After the old skin is loosened it splits along the sides of the body and in front of the eyes, the slit being just above the legs and jaws, and that portion of the old skeleton which had covered the back is lifted off like a lid. The new skin, at first elastic enough to accommodate the increased size of the body, soon becomes hardened like the old, and must in its turn be shed. Imagine, if you can, the surprise of a wolf-spider who, in running through the grass, should stumble over his own outgrown skeleton, so like his former self in all its details that he could scarcely fail to recognize it as his own; for even the transparent cornea of the eye is a part of this outer skeleton and is shed with it, as well as the jaws, sensitive spines, and hairs. [Illustration] THE SPINY-BELLIED SPIDER WHICH BUILDS NETS ACROSS THE PATH (_Acrosoma gracile_, Walck.) We are accustomed to the dromedary's hump and the kangaroo's big tail, but had this creature been as big as either, or were we Lilliputians, its black and white spiny body, shaped at the bottom like an umbrella stand, would attract more attention at the zoo than either of those desert beasts.