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Men and Women by Robert Browning
page 40 of 154 (25%)

29. Black lynx: the Syrian lynx is distinguished by black ears.

43. Tertians: fevers, recurring every third day; hence the name.

44. Falling-sickness: epilepsy. Caesar's disease ("Julius Caesar,"
I. 2, 258).

45. There's a spider here: "The habits of the aranead here
described point very clearly to some one of the Wandering group,
which stalk their prey in the open field or in divers
lurking-places, and are distinguished by this habit from the other
great group, known as the Sedentary spiders, because they sit or
hang upon their webs and capture their prey by means of silken
snares. The next line is not determinative of the species, for
there is a great number of spiders any one of which might be
described as 'Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-gray back.' We have
a little Saltigrade or Jumping spider, known as the Zebra spider
(Epiblemum scenicum), which is found in Europe, and I believe also
in Syria. One often sees this species and its congeners upon the
ledges of rocks, the edges of tombstones, the walls of buildings,
and like situations, hunting their prey, which they secure by
jumping upon it. So common is the Zebra spider, that I might think
that Browning referred to it, if I were not in doubt whether he
would express the stripes of white upon its ash-gray abdomen by the
word 'mottles.' However, there arc other spiders belonging to the
same tribe (Saltigrades) that really are mottled. There are also
spiders known as the Lycosids or Wolf spiders or Ground spiders,
which are often of an ash-gray color, and marked with little whitish
spots after the manner of Browning's Syrian species. Perhaps the
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