GREGARIOUS SPIDERS. 



By G. CADOGAN-MASTERMAN, M.D. 



HE story of the bird- 

 slaying spider is so 

 nearly apocryphal 

 that it has all the 

 fascination of the 

 untrue for the popu- 

 lar taste ; so, it is 

 almost a pity to 

 spoil the gruesome 

 legend of Madame 

 Merian by the ad- 

 mission that, al- 

 though the gigantic 

 Mygale does secure 

 sleeping or wounded 

 birds occasionally, 

 they are usually 

 humming birds not 

 half its own size, 

 and they are none 

 of its own trapping, since it does not form a web. 

 This may not be true of every variety, but the spin- 

 nerets of all I examined were of quite rudimentary 

 development. And I have seen it come down with 

 so obviously an unintentional and most disconcerted 

 flop on the floor of my quarters that even the almost 

 universal suspensory line was evidently beyond its 

 textile capabilities, or, at least, out of its line of 

 business. 



I have sometimes thought that this horrible creature 

 was the avenging Fate of other spiders : that when 

 they became too horribly bloated, too sated with 

 lustful slaughter, it crept upon them in the darksome 

 but never silent night, a living incubus, a hairy, form- 

 less horror, and with one stab of its poison fangs 

 recalled the dying agony of an insect hecatomb. 



But the still stranger and yet most true story of the 



gregarious spider of Paraguay is almost unknown. I 



am far away now from books of reference which might 



confound me, but I am under the impression that I 



No. 313.— January 1891, 



told it myself for the first time in England in i860. 

 The strangeness of it is this : Spiders are the most 

 solitary of assassins, and, were it not for the anatomist, 

 we might believe that they were created without 

 hearts or bowels, for, even the tender passion softens 

 but for a few fleeting moments the cold-blooded 

 ferocity of their lives ; many an ardent but too 

 tempting lover amongst them has been at one 

 minute the bridegroom and at the next himself the 

 marriage feast ! 



I have watched such a swain crouching motionless 

 at the edge of a web for an hour, yet ever ready for 

 a backward spring, stilling — we may imagine — the 

 beating of his vesicular heart lest it should vibrate the 

 threads too aggravatingly, and casting from six to 

 eight sheep's eyes at the velvet-robed damsel within. 

 She, meanwhile, as watchful, almost as motionless, 

 only meditatively twiddling her palpi as she wonders 

 if she love him enough to eat him. And, alas, the 

 next morning I have found his shrivelled remains still 

 in the old spot, but wrapped in the newest of silk and 

 his inamorata the most buxom of Artemisias. 



Reaumur hoped to cultivate spider silk : he fed his 

 spinners and spinsters right royally ; he sang to them 

 chansons d'amour, but nothing could subdue their 

 longing for arachnidian " long pig " ; the big spiders 

 ate the little ones, and then, with unabated appetite, 

 tried to eat each other. A pair of stockings, it is 

 said, was woven from the silk, but I believe are as 

 mythical as the web of Penelope. 



Imagine, then, the astonishment with which I saw 

 with my own eyes thousands of large spiders living, 

 working, peacefully feasting together in webs as big 

 as a large table-cloth ! 



It was on the broad sandy road from the capital to 

 La Trinidad that I met with the first example, and, 

 although it had been much torn by the wind, it was 

 large enough to puzzle me as to its nature. The road 

 is about forty feet wide — road-making in that part 

 of the world means simply clearing si certain space of 



B 



