NATURAL ENEMIES. 19 



strong enough to entangle small birds ; but nei- 

 ther writers say that they do so, and the latter 

 expressly asserts that they are not hurtful ; al- 

 though, after noticing the beauty of their mark- 

 ings, he adds that their webs are so strong as to 

 impede small birds in their flight. These spiders, 

 allied apparently to the elegant geometric spiders 

 of Europe (Epeira), probably belong to the 

 genus Nephila of Dr. Leach, of which one, the 

 Nephila clavipes, makes the strongest web, in the 

 West Indies. 



Eochefort, in his " Histoire naturelle et mo- 

 rale des Antilles," 1658, admirably describes 

 that large brown spider of South America, now 

 called Mygale, and he ends his description with 

 the following words " They feed upon flies and 

 similar creatures, and it is observed, that in some 

 places, they spin nets which are so strong that 

 small birds which become entangled therein, 

 have considerable difficulty in extricating them- 

 selves. The same is said of the spiders which 

 are commonly found in the Bermudas, held by 

 the English, and it is very probable that those are 

 of the same species." They are not, however, of 

 the same species, for the mygale is a genus of 

 ground spiders, and altogether different from 

 that of the beautiful geometric spider, called 

 nephila. It is here plain that Eochefort con- 

 founded the burrowing with the net-weaving 

 spiders. Still we have no statement authorising 

 us to believe that Humming-birds are the prey 



