BIRD-CATCHING SPIDER. 21 



est composee de fils si forts, qu'elle arrete de 

 petits oiseaux, et embarrasse meme 1'homme qui 

 s'y trouve engage." It is singular with what 

 tenacity, even the best naturalists will adhere 

 to any story that has a touch of the marvellous, 

 The fact is, that the strongest geometric web 

 which any spider in South America, Mexico, or 

 the "West Indies, is capable of weaving, would 

 be cut through as by a spear, when dashed 

 against by the smallest humming bird. 



As, however, it is to the large brown spider of 

 Eochefort, one of the genus My gale, the Aranea 

 avicularia of Linnaeus, that Madame Meriau 

 and book-makers following in her train, have 

 attributed the atrocious deed of slaughtering 

 Humming-birds, we shall here revert to Mr. 

 Macleay's paper. 



The genus My gale, " of which several and enor- 

 mous 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, 

 and where certainly no Humming-bird can get 

 at it, and finally, because Mygale is in 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 Juli, Porcellones (wood- 

 lice), subterranean Achetce, and those large 



