MR. W. S. MACLEAY ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MYGALE. 191 
author had just described, but to another large and beautifully coloured genus of 
Spider, now called Nephila. 
Maria Sibylla Merian, thirty or forty years later, read that Rochefort’s large brown 
Spider catches small birds in its web, and jumping at the conclusion that it would not 
catch them without an ulterior object, she accordingly, in her work ‘ De Generatione 
et Metamorphosibus Insectorum Surinamensium’, has, if I recollect right, most obli- 
gingly figured from her imagination an enormous Mygale in the very act of ungraciously 
devouring a Humming-bird'! Hence Linnzus called it Aranea avicularia; hence, too, 
our ignorant bookmakers sometimes devote a popularly pathetic paragraph and expla- 
natory wood-cut to the horrors of the bird-catching Spider. 
Now the genus Mygale, of which several and enormous species exist in Cuba, cannot 
possibly catch birds, because it spins no net ; because it lives during the day in holes 
under stones®, or in tubes sometimes three feet deep in the earth, which generally open 
under stones, and where certainly no Humming-bird can get at it; and finally, because 
Mygale is itself too inactive in its motions, and humbly keeps too close to its mother 
earth to be able to get near a Humming-bird, which, as far as I have seen, never perches 
except on branches. The true food of this Spider I have found from the debris in its 
tubes to be Iuh, Porcelliones, subterranean Achet@, and those large sluggish Cockroaches 
which swarm under almost every stone. So far from making a geometrical web like 
the crafty Epéwride, Mygale only spins at times a fine white silken tapestry to line its 
tube withal, and to keep itself dry. In rainy weather, indeed, I have noticed the orifice 
of this tube, if not opening under a stone, to be sometimes closed by an irregular 
cobweb. 
‘It is singular with what tenacity even the best naturalists will adhere to any story that has a touch of the 
marvellous. In the last edition of Cuvier’s ‘Régne Animal’, the fable of a Spider catching birds retains its 
place, although Messrs. Kirby and Spence had long referred to a work of M. Langsdorff, in which it is denied. 
See ‘Introduction to Entomology’, vol. i. p.424. By the way, in the same page of the ‘ Introduction’, Aranea 
venatoria is said to construct in the ground a singular cavity. The Ar. venatoria of Linneus is very common 
in Cuba, and does no such thing. Messrs. Kirby and Spence no doubt, therefore, allude to the Ar. venatoria of 
Fabricius, which is a Mygale. The work of M. Langsdorff mentioned by Messrs. Kirby and Spence, is doubt- 
less the ‘Bemerkungen auf einer Reise um die Welt’, which, however, I only know by an extract given in 
Germar’s ‘ Magazin der Entomologie’, p.183. Here M. Langsdorff unequivocally declares that the Vogelspinne 
of Brazil does not catch Humming-birds, and that this vulgar story is altogether false. He truly says, “Diese 
Spinne macht kein gewebe, sondern lebt bestiindig unter die erde in léchern.” 
* The holes of the Mygale avicularia are very common in my garden, and in external appearance exactly like 
what in the gardens of England are called toad-holes. The Mygale is of the greatest use to me, as it feeds on 
the Achete, Gryllotalpe, Blatte, and other subterranean Orthoptera that are the greatest plagues of the horti- 
culturist in warm countries. If Myg. avicularia does not catch birds, birds, however, will sometimes catch it. 
I had once in my garden a tame Cao (Corvus Jamaicensis), which was skilfully expert in turning these Spiders 
up out of the soil, and still more scientifically tasty in his mode of sucking the entire juice out of their body. 
He did not, however, devour them. 
