1'ROTECTIVK COLORATION. Ill 



* boys ' were procuring for me some botanical specimens from 

 a high tree, I was rather dreamily looking on the shrubs 

 before me, when I became conscious of my eyes resting on a 

 bird-excreta-marked leaf. How strange, I thought, it is that 

 I have never got another specimen of that curious spider 

 I found in Java which simulated a patch just like this ! I 

 plucked the leaf by the petiole while so cogitating, and 

 looked at it half listlessly for some moments, mentally re- 

 marking how closely that other spider had copied nature ; 

 when, to my delighted surprise, I discovered I had actually 

 secured a second specimen, but the imitation was so exquisite 

 that I really did not perceive how matters stood for some 

 moments. The spider never moved while I was plucking or 

 twirling the leaf, and it was only when I placed the tip of my 

 little finger on it, that I observed that it was a spider, when 

 it,, without any displacement of itself, flashed its falces into 

 my flesh. 



" The first specimen I got was in West Java. While hunting 

 one day for lepidoptera, I observed a specimen of one of the 

 Hesperidte sitting, as is often a custom of theirs, on the 

 excreta of a bird on a leaf ; I crept near it, intending to 

 examine what they find in what one is inclined to consider 

 incongruous food for a butterfly. I approached nearer and 

 nearer, and at last caught it between my fingers, when I 

 found that it had, as I thought, become glued by its feet to 

 the mass ; but on pulling gently, the spider, to my amazement, 

 disclosed itself by letting go its hold. Only then did I 

 discover that I was not looking on a veritable bird's excreta." 

 There are numerous other examples of protective resemblances 

 in spiders. 



Prof. Edouard Heckel has described and illustrated * with 



* Bnlldin Scient. France et Bcly., t. xxiii. (1891). 



