Mr. R. I. Pocock on the Genus Poecilotheria. 8? 



also in popular works on natural history, where special refer- 

 ence to them is made on account of their size and alleged 

 propensity for killing and eating small birds. The truth on 

 this point appears to be as follows : — 



Madame Merian, who was one of the first to make known 

 the existence of these large spiders, although stating that the 

 species she observed in Surinam feeds mostly on ants, asserted 

 that they also take young humming-birds from their nests 

 when the supply of insects runs short j and this description is 

 accompanied by a coloured figure of a spider devouring one 

 of these birds. The accuracy of this observation was subse- 

 quently confirmed by Mr. Bates, who also gave an illustration 

 of the destruction of a small bird by one of these great spiders. 

 A similar story accompanied by another figure is told in ' The 

 Illustrated Natural History ' by the late Rev. J. Gr. Wood. 

 Thus from the small substratum of fact established by Madame 

 Merian arose the widespread and sensational belief that the 

 staple article of food of these spiders consists of small birds. 

 As a matter of fact, there is no doubt that they feed almost 

 entirely upon insects ; but they will certainly also kill and 

 devour any living animal they are powerful enough to over- 

 come. In support of this statement and of those made by 

 Madame Merian and Mr. Bates it may be added that during 

 his stay in Borneo Mr. A. Everett captured a specimen of 

 the species I have described as Phormingochilus tigrinus in a 

 bird's nest, where it had killed the young bird ; and that the 

 specimen of Poecilotheria described below as P. regalis and 

 figured on PI. VII. was, when captured, devouring a small 

 rat which presumably it had killed. 



Apart from diet, these large spiders differ somewhat in 

 mode of life. Most of them live on the ground beneath 

 stones or in deep burrows which are excavated in the soil 

 and lined with a layer of silk, to prevent the infall of loose 

 particles of earth or sand. Others, again, are found in trees, 

 where they spin a light silken domicile either between forked 

 branches, or in the hollow trunk, or in leaves rolled up for 

 the purpose. The species of Poecilotheria are now known 

 to be tree-living forms. Colonel Yerbury, for instance, tells 

 me that in Ceylon he discovered P. fasciata on trunks of trees, 

 where they spin a light web in the angle formed by a pro- 

 jecting branch; and a specimen of a species closely allied to 

 P. regalis that was sent from the Thana district in the 

 Bombay Presidency by Mr. A. G. Edie fell off a tree when 

 it was struck with an axe ; lastly, the specimens of the 

 three S.-Indian species recorded below were captured in the 

 stacks of timber cut in the forests for fuel. 



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