162 A NATURALIST IN HIMALAYA 



I fear I have wearied my readers with this long 

 account of my observations on spiders. I wish I 

 could give them a little of the pleasure that I obtained 

 in making them. I will conclude with an incident 

 illustrating their strength and pertinacity. Spiders of 

 the genus Artema spin a snare in the form of a tangled 

 network of stay-lines supporting below a concave 

 hammock. The spider hangs head downwards from 

 the under surface of the hammock, and, whenever an 

 insect becomes entangled in the stay-lines, it violently 

 vibrates the snare in order to shake the capture down 

 into the hammock. On one occasion I watched a 

 large moth strike against the stay-lines, meet with 

 immediate difficulties and soon tumble down into the 

 quivering snare. The spider instantly seized the moth 

 by the tip of the abdomen, while the struggling insect, 

 in its efforts to escape, broke through the floor of the 

 hammock. The moth was now unsupported by the 

 snare, but was held firmly in the spider's fangs while 

 the latter hung head downwards by its hind claws 

 from a filament of the snare. This genus of spider 

 injects no poison ; it has no knowledge of the vital 

 anatomical point ; it subdues its victim by its own 

 strength. Now the moth was at least six times as 

 large as the spider and must have been an enormous 

 weight for that little creature to support ; moreover 

 the moth, by continual struggles and vibrations of its 

 wings, endeavoured to escape, and it seemed as though 

 at any moment it would break free. Yet the spider 

 continued to cling with its hind claws to the filament 

 and to maintain its fangs fixed in the abdomen of that 

 unsupported struggling moth. It persisted in that 

 attitude, stubbornly refusing to let go its prey, and not 



