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TttE CA^ADUN ENTOMOLOGIST. o 



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met with his spider a second time, and was even more badly fooled 

 by it than before. In Proc. Zool. Soc, 1883, p. 586, he gives his 

 experience as follows : — 



"On June 25th, iS8t, in the forest near the village of Lempar, 

 on the banks of the Moesi River, in Sumatra, while my " boys " were 

 procuring for me some botanical specimens from a high tree, I was 

 rather dreamily looking on the shrubs before me, when I became 

 conscious of my eyes resting on a bird-excreta-marked leaf. How 

 strange, I thought, it is that I have never got another specimen of 

 that curious spider I found in Java which simulated a patch just like 

 this. I plucked the leaf by the petiole while so cogitating, and looked 

 at it half listlessly for some moments, mentally remarking how closely 

 that other spider had copied nature ; when to my delighted surprise, 

 I discovered I had actually secured a second specimen, but the 

 imitation was so exquisite that I really did not perceive how matters 

 stood for some moments. The spider never moved while I was 

 plucking or twirling the leaf, and it was only when I placed the 

 tip of my finger on it, that I observed that it was a spider, when 

 it, without any displacement of itself, flashed its falces into my flesh. 

 "The first specimen I got was in West Java. While hunting 

 one day for lepidoptera I observed a specimen of one of the Hes- 

 peridte sitting, as is often a custom of theirs, on the excreta of a 

 bird on a leaf; I crept near it, intending to examine what they 

 find in what one is inclined to consider incongruous food for a 

 butterfly. I approached nearer and nearer, and at last caught it 

 between my fingers, when I found that it had, as I thought, become 

 glued by its feet to the mass; but on pulling gently, the spider, 

 to my amazement, disclosed itself by letting go its hold. Only then 

 did I discover that I was not looking on a veritable bird's excreta." 

 Since reading of Mr. Forbes's later experience I have given 

 myself no mental promises as to how readily I should be able to 

 recognize Madam Misumeiia vatia (?) when I next meet her unex- 

 pectedly. Unless greatly mistaken, I have beaten this same spider 

 from branches of trees while collecting beetles, and experienced no 

 difficulty in recognizing its nature as it dropped into an inverted 

 umbrella, and am quite sure that, without the white web on the 

 leaf, which resembles the white splashings of the semi-fluid excreta, 

 it would be far less deceptive. 



