Ixv | G20.) 
whilst her hind pair of legs were applied one at a time to her 
spinnerets, bringing away at each movement a strand of silk 
which was then applied to the revolving beetle; the operation 
was carried out with great rapidity, and I could almost 
persuade myself that I was watching the movements of some 
ingenious silk-winding machine. When the beetle had become 
an amorphous bundle, one long strand was attached to it, the 
other end of the strand being held by one of the hind-legs ; 
the spider then rapidly scaled its huge web, the silken bundle 
dangling from one leg, and attached the strand to one of the 
strands of the web. When my experiments came to an end 
four of the bundles were hanging from the web, one containing 
the beetle, the others specimens of the Pierine butterfly Zerias 
hecabe. The first specimen of Terias put into the web was 
quickly eaten, but the other three were bitten and then wound 
up into bundles. If an insect was distasteful to the spider the 
strands in which it was entangled were cut, one of these 
strands was then caught up by one of the hind-legs of the 
spider, and after a few vigorous jerks of this leg the offensive 
insect was thrown clear of the web. The Reduviid bug 
Cosmolestes picticeps, a conspicuous black and yellow species, 
was thus treated ; Velinus nigrigenw another, but larger, yellow 
and black Reduviid was approached with great caution, the 
spider just touched it with her palpi and started back as if 
alarmed, the strands of the web were cut in a wide circle 
round the prisoner so that a large hole was made, and the bug 
was jerked for some little distance away from the web; both 
these bugs were quite uninjured by their temporary imprison- 
ment and soon managed to free themselves of the sticky silk 
in which they had been enmeshed. The small black bee with 
white-tipped wings Zrigona apicalis was always thrown out of 
the web instantly, whereas the reddish species 7’. lacteifascia 
was in one case seized by the spider, but after it had been 
mouthed considerably was dropped in favour of a Muscid fly 
which then flew of its own accord into the web; a second 
specimen was rejected. It should be mentioned in this 
connection that the black and white species of bee is much 
more common than the reddish species and is mimicked very 
widely by Diptera, Coleoptera, other Hymenoptera and a 
