Enormous Tarantulas

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 31 July 1926, Page 11

Enormous Tarantulas

TVjTR F. A. MITCHEEL-HEDGES, the IVL explorer, who with Mr T. A. Jovee, nf the Ethnological Department of the British Museum, and Lady (Richmond) Brown has recommenced excavations at the ruined Maya city of Eubaantun, in British Honduras, writing from Lubaantun on April 21, says: The great ruined Maya city, a real city of mystery, grows more impressive and vast every day. Into my mind crept a conviction which may be the solution to the inscrutable 'mystery of Eubaantun. It was that this gigantic citadel was a Maya citv of the. dead —a vast cemetery—that within the great ampitheatro the last mystical and solemn rituals were held and sacrifices made to the spirits of the departed. No sooner was excavation work commenced on the first mound than immediately an unexpected and certainly unwanted development took place. It was literally a mound of scorpions. As every stone of considerable size was removed, scorpions darted out- —black females with innumerable little ones, red males with yellow legs, scaly scorpions, others bluish in colour —horrible! The place was alive with the filthy creatures. The second mound was not without its excitement, for very shortly two enormous tar an tub-, spiders made their appearance, each cuddling a leathery egg as large as a golf ball. Enraged, they defended their eggs to the utmost. Their fury and the savage way in which they repelled all efforts to capture them were remarkable. But after much stratagem and manoeuvring they were, finally trapped and forced within a large necked killing bottle. Together with their eggs they are being preserved