the back of his left hand. On looking at his hand he found a red spider making its escape across the skin. He immediately killed the spider, bringing me the remains. There was no doubt the animal was a katipo. I saw the patient, who was aged eighteen, about three hours after the bite. He staggered into my consulting-room, and whilst showing me his hand, and explaining how its present condition came about, fainted. He recovered after applying restoratives. I then examined his hand. Though the bite had occurred only three hours before there was acute cellulitis (inflammation of the soft tissues) all over the back of the hand, spreading up into the forearm. The point where the bite had been made was the seat of most acute inflammation. The lymphatics up the arm on its extensor surface were red, and standing out like cords as far as the elbow. The glands at the bend of the elbow were enlarged and very painful. The axillary glands were painful, but not enlarged. The interesting part of the case, however, was the general condition of the patient; as I stated, the man fainted when he came to see me. I may say that he had come in by train and driven to my house, so that no undue exertion had been used. The heart's action was irregular and feeble in the extreme. The pupils of the eye were dilated, and acted badly to light and accommodation. There was some involuntary muscular twitching, chiefly of the face and of the left-arm muscles. The knee-jerks were almost absent. The arm-reflexes had entirely gone, both superficial and deep. The man felt sick, and his tongue was dirty. His temperature was 101° Fahr. He had relatives in Wellington, and I sent him straight home to bed, visiting him an hour later. I then found the inflammation in the left hand had greatly increased, and he was delirious, with a temperature of 103° Fahr. I at once administered ether, and made several deep incisions on the dorsum of the left hand down to the bone, and, as the back of the forearm was œdematous, I made two further incisions there. They all bled freely, which bleeding I did not stop. All the incisions were dressed with antiseptic double cyanide gauze soaked in 1-in-40 carbolic. The next morning the patient was quite rational, the heart's action was much stronger, and the local inflammation had greatly subsided. From this time onwards he made an uninterrupted recovery.

The points of interest are, first, the intensity of the local inflammation. In this case had the man used a knife freely when bitten, caused copious bleeding, and then sucked the wound he probably would have escaped with very little further trouble; but, instead, he left the bite alone. The local effect of the bite was not unlike that of a scorpion, though not by any means so severe. The acute nature of the cellulitis