I9Q15.] F. H. Gravety : Indian Insects, Myriapods, etc. 513 
on a Cyrtophora web, instead of getting entangled it seems quite 
at home. When, however, it wishes to make its way into the 
inner parts of the framework, its long legs appear to be much in 
the way. If it cannot find room to get between the strands in 
the direction in which it wishes to go, it proceeds to cut some of 
them with its raptorial front legs; but these seem ill-adapted for 
the purpose, and progress is often very laborious and slow. Pre- 
sumably, therefore, the unusual habits of the genus have been 
somewhat recently acquired. 
Cyrtophora ciccatrosa is inclined to be gregarious, and although 
each spider makes for itself a separate dome, the frameworks of 
several webs are usually united. Males (which are minute) and 
young live in small domes in the common framework of the 
group and each female arranges her pear-shaped egg-cocoons in a 
string above the centre of her dome. : 
Eugubinus is often seen making its way towards the string 
of egg cocoons, and I suspect that their contents form its staple 
food. A specimen let loose in some webs in the Museum com- 
pound was seen more than once, soon after mid-day, with its 
proboscis inserted into one of the cocoons. This is not, however, the 
only food that it is able to take; for when I introduced some 
sweepings from among grass into a cage containing specimens that 
had had little or no food for several days, they began to investigate 
even grass seeds, and finally one of them made a meal off a mori- 
bund spider (? Tetragnatha sp.). Perhaps the ancestors of Eugu- | 
binus found insects caught in the outer parts of the frame-work 
of Cyrtophora webs an easy prey, and later found their way to the 
eggs in the interior. 
The excessively slender body and legs of Eugubinus, and their 
variegated colour, make the bug somewhat difficult to distinguish 
among the strands of the webs of Cyrtophora, especially as only 
webs in shady situations seem to be frequented. But this alone 
seems insufficient to explain why the bug is allowed to destroy 
the spider’s offspring. When specimens were let loose in webs in 
the Museum compound they shook the webs somewhat as they fell 
upon them. A spider immediately rushed out to one of the bugs, 
ran half way along its body, and seemed just about to strike when, 
instead of the bug writhing in its grasp as I expected, the spider 
fled back to its dome. I supposed that the bug must have emitted 
something highly distasteful to the spider; but next morning this 
very spider was seen making a meal off one of the bugs! 
Green records the frequenting of the webs of Archiopsocus 
sp. by Ploiariola polita, and believes this Reduviid to be predatory 
on the Psocids in the webs (Spolia Zeylanica, VIII, p. 71). 
Cimicidae. 
The bat Scotophilus kuhli is recorded by Kunhikannan as a 
host of Cimex rotundatus (J.B.N.H.S., XXI, p. 1342). 
