The Life of the Spider. Jean-Henri Casimir Fabre

↑ The Tarantula is a Lycosa, or Wolf-spider. Fabre's Tarantula, the Black-bellied Tarantula, is identical with the Narbonne Lycosa, under which name the description is continued in Chapters III to VI, all of which were written at a considerably later date than the present chapter.—Translator's Note.

      4 ↑ Giorgio Baglivi (1669-1707), professor of anatomy and medicine at Rome.—Translator's Note.

      5 ↑ "When our husbandmen wish to catch them, they approach their hiding-places, and play on a thin grass pipe, making a sound not unlike the humming of bees. Hearing which, the Tarantula rushes out fiercely that she may catch the flies or other insects of this kind, whose buzzing she thinks it to be; but she herself is caught by her rustic trapper."

      6 ↑ Provençal for the bit of waste ground on which the author studies his insects in the natural state.—Translator's Note.

      7 ↑ 'Thanks to the Bumble-bee.'

      8 ↑ Like the Dung-beetles.—Translator's Note.

      9 ↑ Like the Solitary Wasps.—Translator's Note.

      10 ↑ Such as the Hairy Ammophila, the Cerceris and the Languedocian Sphex. Digger-wasps described in other of the author's essays.—Translator's Note.

      11 ↑ The desnucador, the Argentine slaughterman, whose methods of slaying cattle are detailed in the author's essay entitled, The Theory of Instinct.—Translator's Note.

      12 ↑ A family of Grasshoppers.—Translator's Note.

      13 ↑ A genus of Beetles.—Translator's Note.

      14 ↑ A species of Digger-wasp.—Translator's Note.

      15 ↑ The Cicada is the Cigale, an insect akin to the Grasshopper and found more particularly in the South of France.—Translator's Note.