GREGARIOUS SPIDERS. 711 



The chinchilla, another rodent, is very common in the fields 

 and esteros. There is a large heron, called in Guarani the 

 tuyuaju — that is, one which walks in the mud — nearly as tall 

 as a man, with a bill more than a foot in length. The puma 

 ranges throughout the country, as he does much further south ; 

 while the jaguar also appears amid the forests and plains. 



GREGARIOUS SPIDERS. 



Among the insects, Masterman describes a gregarious spider 

 which, when full-grown, has a black body half an inch in 

 length — with a row of bright red spots on the side of the ab- 

 domen — four eyes, remarkably strong mandibles, and stout 

 hairless legs an inch in length. They construct in concert 

 huge webs, generally between two trees, ten or twelve feet from 

 the ground. In a garden, among trees forty feet apart, these 

 spiders had extended two long cables, as thick as pack-thread, 

 to form the margin of each web, the lower being only four 

 feet from the ground ; and between them was a light, loose 

 network perfectly divided into webs, each presenting about 

 two square feet of surface. Each of these sub-webs was 

 occupied by a spider from sunset to a little before sunrise. 

 Six nets contained two thousand of the creatures. They 

 often change their location ; and a double stream was always 

 passing along the cables, apparently strengthening them as 

 they came and went. 



Sometimes three or four would be lying in wait within a 

 few inches of each other, the one crawling over or under the 

 other's body without hesitation. Soon after sunrise they left 

 their webs, and, retreating to the shade, formed two or three 

 large masses as big as a hat under the thick foliage of a jessa- 

 rnine-tree. There they remained motionless till sunset, when 



