“Claire, did you notice the fineness of the spider’s fangs?” asked Emile. “I am sure that in your needle-case you haven’t any such fine-pointed needles.” “I dare say not. As for me, what surprises me the most is not the fineness of the spider’s fangs, but the quickness of the victim’s death. It seems to me that a fly as large as this one ought not to die so quickly even from the coarser pricks of our needles.” “Very true,” assented her uncle. “An insect transfixed by a pin still lives a long time; but if it is only pricked by the fine point of the spider’s fangs, it dies almost instantly. But then, the spider takes care to poison its weapon. Its fangs are venomous; they are perforated by a minute canal through which the spider lets flow at will a scarcely visible little drop of liquid called venom, which the creature makes as it makes the silk liquid. The venom is held in reserve in a slender pocket placed in the interior of the fangs. When the spider pricks its prey, it makes a little of this liquid pass into the wound, and that suffices to bring speedy death to the wounded insect. The victim dies, not from the prick itself, but from the dreadful ravages wrought by the venom discharged into the wound.” Here Uncle Paul, in order to give his hearers a better view of the poisonous fangs, took the epeira with the tips of his fingers. Claire uttered a cry of fear, but her uncle soon calmed her. “Don’t be uneasy, my dear child: the poison that kills a fly will have no effect on Uncle Paul’s hard skin.” And with the aid of a pin he opened the creature’s fangs to show them in detail to the children, who were quite reassured. “You must not be too frightened,” he continued, “at the quick death of the fly and of the bumble-bee, and so look on spiders as creatures to be feared by us. The fangs of most of them would have great difficulty in piercing our skin. Courageous observers have let themselves be bitten by the various spiders of our country. The sting has never produced any serious results; nothing more than a redness less painful than that produced by the sting of a mosquito. At the same time, persons with a delicate skin ought to beware of the large kinds, were it only to spare themselves a passing pain. Without any excessive alarm we avoid the wasp’s sting, which is very painful; let us avoid the spider’s fangs in the same way without uttering loud cries at the sight of one of these creatures. We will resume the subject of the venomous insects. But it is late; let us go.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXIX VENOMOUS INSECTS