1906-1907.] Observations on a My gale Spider. 403 



it has changed its skin three times, but has grown very little. 

 The Mygalidee are a family of spiders which include the trap- 

 door and large lurking spiders, which latter are said to kill 

 birds. A little over two hundred years ago Madame Merian 

 published her account of the insects of Surinam, where she 

 mentions she found many large dark-coloured spiders on the 

 guava tree. She says : " Their common food is ants, but 

 when they cannot obtain ants they carry off even small birds 

 from their nests, and suck the blood from their bodies." For 

 one hundred and fifty years this statement was disbelieved, 

 untn Mr Bates, who spent eleven years on the banks of the 

 Amazon, verified her statement. 



The only example of the Mygalidae we have in this country 

 is Atypus sulzeri, a trap-door spider, which is chiefly confined 

 to the southern counties of England, but a few have been found 

 nearly as far north as the Scottish border. 



When this spider, Psalmopoeus Cambridgii, came into my 

 possession its abdomen was shrunk and wrinkled, and it looked 

 as if it had been starved for some time. For the first few 

 weeks it was fed on flies, but as winter was approaching the 

 supply soon failed. It was next tried with field beetles, and 

 on an average it would consume three a-day. By the beginning 

 of November beetles were diflficult to get. Since then it has 

 been fed with cockroaches, which were much larger than the 

 beetles it had been gettiug. For the first few weeks it took 

 about three cockroaches a-week, but this number gradually 

 decreased until the middle of March, when it stopped eating 

 altogether, and on the 13th of April 1906 it cast its skin. For 

 fully a month after this it remained in a semi-comatose state, 

 and although it had always plenty of food for the taking, this 

 it strenuously refused. During the next five months it took 

 very little food, and again cast its skin on the 10th of October. 

 Five months after, on the 7th of March 1907, for the third 

 time since it came into my possession, it again shed its 

 skin. 



I may here mention that the house I occupy is the half 

 of a double villa. On the mutual wall that separates the 

 two kitchens, opposite my neighbour's fireplace, where the 

 wall is always warm, the spider's box is hung. The temper- 

 ature in the box varies between 64° and 76°. There are 

 always a few cockroaches in the box along with the spider : 



