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NATURAL SCIENCE. 



Jan., 



India and Queensland are furnished either with Wood-Mason's type 

 of musical instrument or with another type which has never yet been 

 described. 



In both cases the instrument consists of a series of strings or 

 keys, and of strikers, which set them vibrating. In Wood-Mason's 

 organ, the strings, which are placed upon the inner surface of the 

 basal segment of the palp, are composed of strong, horny, club-like 

 rods, which vary in length, thickness, and shape (Figg. 7 & 8). Most of 

 them are slightly curved, and all of them lie in a general direction, 

 parallel to the surface of the segment that bears them. This 

 surface is curved in a way that suggests the sounding-board of a 

 piano or violin ; and overhanging the bases of the strings there is a 

 thick fringe of hairs, which may possibly perform the office of a 



Figg. 3, 4, and 5. — Mandible, palp, and vibrating hair in Phormingochilus. 

 Figg. 6, 7, and 8. — The same in Musagetes. 



"mute" or "damper." At all events, since the strings vary in 

 length and form, it seems clear that they must give rise to different 

 notes when thrown into a state of vibration ; but whether, like the 

 rats of Hamelin Town, the spiders are capable of " squeaking in fifty 

 different sharps and flats," we are at present not in a position to say. 

 The strikers, or scrapers, placed on the outer surface of the mandible, 

 consist of longer and shorter spines, as in the S. Indian genus 

 Pcecilothcvia and the Burmese Musagetes (Fig. 6), or of long, stout, 

 spiniform hairs, as in the Javan Selenocosmia and the Austro-Malayan 

 P hi gius. 



In the other kind of musical instrument which some of these 

 oriental spiders possess, the strings are situated on the outer surface 



