Mr. A. Adams on the Habits of certain Exotic Spiders. 293 



forests of Mindanao the habits of the extraordinary spiders that 

 abound there, to figure and describe the varied forms of which 

 would require the pencil of Abbot, and many years of unwearied 

 application. 



The bodies of the Epeira seen in the tropics are often most 

 splendidly ornamented, I might almost say illuminated, for many 

 of them remind you of the gaudy ancient missals painted by 

 monks in the dark ages. You may have white figures on a red 

 ground ; red, yellow and black, in alternate streaks ; orange 

 marbled with brown ; light green with white ocelli ; yellow with 

 light brown festoons, or ash-coloured and chestnut bodies with 

 crescents, horse-shoes, Chinese characters, and grotesque hiero- 

 glyphics of every description. Then again the shape of their 

 bodies is endless in variety ; they are round or oval, flattened or 

 globular, angular, tuberculated, lobed, spined, or furnished with 

 hairy tufts. These examples, 



" Whose shapes would make them, had they bulk and size, 

 More hideous foes than fancy can devise," 



taken at random during one or two excursions in the woods, will 

 tend to show what a wide field is open to the naturalist in these 

 regions of the sun, provided he has nothing of more importance 

 to engage his attention than the investigation of apterous in- 

 sects. 



In the forests about Calderos in Mindanao, I collected some 

 splendid species of gold- and silver-marked Tetragnatha. One, 

 which might be named T. nit ens, has a dark, shining brown tho- 

 rax, and a glittering silver body with five black spots ; the legs 

 banded with dark brown, and the under side light black. It con- 

 structs a large, ingenious, symmetrical web, and drops, when 

 touched, to the ground, taking care, however, at the same time, 

 to suspend itself by a web, by means of which it ascends again 

 when the enemy has departed. In the centre of its web it spins 

 concentric circles and thick mazes of a fine yellow colour, and 

 often of very complicated devices. When it falls to the ground 

 it folds up its legs and feigns death, all its members being per- 

 fectly rigid. 



The Tetragnatha all have a remarkable habit of dividing their 

 eight legs, as they cling, head downwards, to the centre of their 

 toils, throwing out four directly forwards and four directly back- 

 wards. Some species however have the third pair of legs extended 

 straight out in a lateral direction. Another common species had 

 a body mottled with dark brown and covered with white mark- 

 ings ; legs brown, banded; the thorax burnished bright green with 

 darker markings. I have named it provisionally T. refulgens. 

 Numbers of the genus Theridion, of a black colour, were running 



