Mr. Shuckard on Bird-catching Spiders. 435 



continue the trivial name, not only because it is Milium anno- 

 tinmn of Linnseus, but, as applied to the genus Bryum, it is 

 older than turbinatwn. 



I am, my dear Sir, yours sincerely, 



Edward Forster. 

 Woodford, January 17th, 1842. 



LIII. — On Bird-catching Spiders, with remarks on the Com- 

 miinicaiion from W. S. MacLeay, Esq. upon that subject, 

 in the Januarij number of the Annals. By W. E. Shuck- 

 ard, Libr. R.S. 



To the Editors of the Annals and Magazine of Natural History. 

 Gentlemen, 

 I AM unAvilling to have it supposed that in my reference in 

 Lardner's Cyclopaedia to Mr. W. S. ^lacLeaj^s private letter, 

 mentioned in his communication in your last number, I had 

 made any use of it beyond what I understood to be in con- 

 formity M ith his express wish ; and shall therefore merely 

 refer to the passage in his letter which I shall quote below, not 

 merely permitting, but desiring me to make known his re- 

 tractation of an opinion which he had expressed in his paper 

 on Mygale in the ' Transactions of the Zoological Society.' 



With respect to the errors which he has ascribed to me, I 

 readily acknowledge two, not that I made them willingly or 

 wilfidly, for I see them only now that they are pointed out 

 to me ; one of these hoAvever is but partly mine, namely, 

 mistaking Zosterops for Gasterops, which must be attributed 

 in a great measure to Mr. MacLeay's letter being, as he him- 

 self states, hastily written ; and being myself no ornithologist, 

 I did not investigate the name, but took it as it seemed to 

 present itself to me. My second error is, that I said, " He 

 therefore retracts his observations upon Mygale in the Zoolo- 

 gical Transactions." This, I admit, was deduced from too 

 hasty a reading of his letter ; but certainly I did not mean it 

 to imply that Mr. MacLeay retracted all his observations 

 upon Mygale, as he infers, but those only which referred to 

 the subject in hand, namely, the possibility of its propensity 

 to feed upon small birds — when it could catch them. 



With respect to the " tale of Mygale catching birds being 

 either ' sidjstantiated or confirmed ' by another spider of 

 totally different habits having been observed to catch them," 

 although Mr. MacLeay may " deny," I certainly never as- 

 serted ; I merely mentioned the 2}robability of it from the 

 analogy, as the most powerful, most rapacious and fero- 

 cious genus of the class was quite as likely to prey upon 



2 F 2 



