91 



hind-legs of the female rest upon this band, and as the 

 young emerge the)* crawl up and down the mother's legs, 

 helped by the long spines. Mr. Smith gave an amusing 

 account of a notable habitat of this spider — namely, the East 

 London dustheaps at Edmonton, where he had found it very 

 abundant. The decomposing sardine-tins, for instance, attract 

 many bluebottles, and there we find also many spiders. After 

 a few remarks upon the spiders included in the genus Pirata, 

 which are able to run upon the surface of water, and reference 

 to Dolomedes, belonging to a closely allied family, which actually 

 constructs rafts of dried leaves and fragments of twigs, upon 

 which considerable excursions are made, the lecturer went on to 

 speak of the second group of Vagabonds, the Crab-spiders. 

 These are characterised by a peculiar articulation of the legs, 

 enabling the creatures to travel with equal facility forwards, 

 sideways, or even backward-. While the spiders of the first 

 group run, many of those included in this second group may be 

 said to waddle ; but they waddle sometimes very quickly, and 

 their speed, combined with the erratic character of their move- 

 ments, renders them very difficult objects to capture. Some 

 interesting lantern-slides were exhibited of a spider, Oxyptila 

 atomaria, belonging to this group, illustrating the habit of 

 travelling through the air by the aid of gossamer ribbons. The 

 spider climbs to the top of a reed, and when the wind is in the 

 right direction, puts out a small ribbon of web-material. This the 

 wind blows out. The creature then cuts the web away from the 

 reed and sails through the air for some distance ; then drops to 

 the ground, climbs another reed, and repeats the process over and 

 over again. The spider is able, to a considerable extent, to control 

 the length of its journeys, as, if it wishes to drop, it pulls in some 

 of the ribbon of gossamer, and rolls it up between its legs, and 

 if it wishes to prolong its journey more web-material is given 

 out. The third group of Vagabonds — the Salticidae, or Leap- 

 ing, Hunting, or Jumping Spiders, as they have been called — 

 form a very extensive family, far more strongly represented 

 in the tropics than in this country. We have, however, some 

 thirty-three species recorded as British, and the habits of such 

 as have been studied are of extreme interest. The lecturer gave 

 a short description of the more striking characteristics of the 

 Salticids, mentioning also some of the more interesting habits 



