Mr. A. Adams on the Habits of certain Exotic Spiders. 297 



abound in equatorial regions frequently stretch across the path 

 from bush to bush, and prove very troublesome to the naturalist 

 while threading the thickets where they are numerous. 



The imagination can scarcely conceive the bizarre and fantastic 

 shapes with which it has pleased nature to invest those hard- 

 bodied spiders called by naturalists Acrosoma. They have large 

 angular spines sticking out of their bodies, in every kind of 

 fashion, perhaps intended as some sort of defence against the 

 soft-billed birds, which doubtless would otherwise make dainty 

 meals of these Arachnidans, exposed as they are, temptingly 

 suspended in mid- air, on their transparent webs in the forest 

 glades. Some are protected by these long spines to such a de- 

 gree that their bodies resemble a miniature " chevaux de frise," 

 and could not by any possibility be swallowed by a bird without 

 producing a very unpleasant sensation in his throat. One very 

 remarkable species (Gasteracantha arcuata, Koch) has two enor- 

 mous, recurved, conical spines, proceeding upwards from the pos- 

 terior part of the body, several times longer than the entire 

 spider. 



The Drassi are gloomy spiders, haunting obscure places, and 

 their garb is dark-coloured and dingy, in accordance with their 

 habits : they are mostly pale brown, black, dull red or gray. 



The Thomisi are varied in their colour, in harmony with their 

 usual abiding- places : thus those that spend their lives among 

 the flowers and foliage of the trees are delicately and beautifully 

 marked with green and orange, black and yellow. One species, 

 which I have named T. virescens, simulates the vegetation among 

 which it lives, is not agile in its movements, but drops, when 

 alarmed, among the foliage. It is of a pale, delicate, semitrans- 

 parent sap-green, with the eyes and chelicera red. There is a 

 large mark on the surface of the abdomen, beautifully variegated 

 with yellow, pink, and black, and margined with dead-white spots. 

 The under surface is green in the middle and dead-white on 

 either side, and the spinneret is pink. 



I remember one day while living at Sarawak in Borneo, I was 

 much amused with a struggle between a house-lizard (Ptyodac- 

 tylus Gecko), a little domestic reptile which frequents the dwell- 

 ings of the Malays, and a large species of Lycosa ; the "Chichak," 

 as the natives term their familiar Gecko, proved victorious, and 

 succeeded in swallowing the spider, whose enormous legs, pro- 

 truding from the lizard's mouth, gave this strange compound 

 animal the aspect of some wondrous Octopod. Pliny records the 

 fact however that spiders are in the habit of capturing small 

 lizards, first entangling them in their webs and afterwards de- 

 stroying them with their jaws, — a spectacle, he observes, worthy 

 of the amphitheatre ! 



