FOOD OF INSECTS. 273 



cant game. — A species of spider described bj Lister {Epeira conica) 

 more provident tban its brethren, suspends its prey in the meshes above 

 and below the centre, and it is not uncommon to see its larder thus stored 

 with several flies. ^ 



You must not infer that the toils of spiders are in every part of the 

 world formed of such fragile materials as those which we are accustomed 

 to see, or that they are every where contented with small insects for their 

 food. An author in the Philosophical Transactions asserts, that the 

 spiders of Bermudas spin webs between trees seven and eight fathoms 

 distant, which are strong enough to ensnare a bird as large as a thrush.^ 

 And Sir G. Staunton informs us, that in the forests of Java, spiders' webs 

 are met with of so strong a texture as to require a sharp cutting instrument 

 to make way through them.^ The nets of a large geometric spider, 

 Ne-phila (Epeira) clavipes, are sufficiently strong to arrest and entangle 

 the smaller species of humming-birds ; but Mr. W. S. MacLeay, in whose 

 garden at Cuba these nests abounded, never saw or heard of any birds 

 being caught in them.'* On the other hand, however, he observed in the 

 grounds of Elizabeth Bay, near Sydney (Australia), in the beginning of 

 1840, a young bird (Zosterops dorsalis), which had been apparently dead 

 some days, suspended in the geometrical net of an enormous undescribed 

 spider of the same family (^Epeirida), which was in the act of sucking its 

 juices ; and his father, Alexander MacLeay, Esq., informed him that he 

 had also been witness to a similar occurrence ; but he considers these facts 

 as exceptions to the general rule of this spider's insectivorous habits and 

 to be of rare occurrence, since, as far as he could learn, no other persons 

 had observed them.^ 



Nor must you suppose that all the spiders of this country which catch 

 their prey by means of snares follow the same plan in constructing them 

 as the weavers and geometricians whose operations I have endeavored to 

 describe. The form of their snares and the situation in which they place 

 them are so various, that it is impossible to enumerate more than a few of 

 the most remarkable. Agelene labyrinthica extends over the blades of 

 grass a large white horizontal net, having at its margin a cylindrical cell, 

 in the bottom of which, secure from birds and defended from the rays of 

 the sun, the spider lies concealed, whence, on the slightest movement of 

 her net, she rushes out upon her prey. Aranea latens F. conceals itself 

 under a small net spun upon the upper surface of a leaf, and thence 

 seizes upon any insect that chances to pass over it. Theridium IS-gat- 

 tatum forms under stones and in slight furrows in the ground a net consist- 

 ing of threads spun without any regularity in all directions, but so strong 

 as to entrap grasshoppers, which are said to be its principal food ; and a 

 similar inartificial snare of simple threads is often spun in windows by 

 Theridium hipunctaium and several other species. Segestria senoculata 

 and its affinities conceal themselves in a long cylindrical straight silken 

 tube, from the mouth of which they stretch out their six anterior feet, 

 whose extremities rest upon as many diverging threads : thus, as soon as 

 an insect walks across any of the threads (which are eight or ten inches 



' Lister, Hist. Anim. Ang. 32, tit. 4. 



2 Phil. Tr. 1668, p. 792. 3 Emhaisy to China, i. 343. 



* Trans. Zool. Soc. Lond. i. 193. ^ Ann. Nat. Hist. viii. 324. 



