256 SPIDERS. 



Spiders a multitude of wonderful instincts, by means of 

 which they are enabled to defend themselves from injury, 

 provide themselves with food, and furnish safe retreats 

 for their tender progeny. They spin their toils of cunning 

 device, and even powerful insects, armed with formidable 

 stings, are made captive with impunity, despite their 

 struggles to escape the captor. These Spiders' webs 

 generally attract the attention of travellers, and, certainly 

 in some parts of the forests of Mindanao, Borneo, and 

 Celebes, there is great and wonderful diversity in the 

 form and construction of these ingenious and delicately- 

 woven nets. ' Many have black webs, some have white, 

 others brown, and in Mindanao I have observed toils 

 formed of perfectly yellow threads. The nets of the 

 great species of Nephila, which abound in equatorial 

 regions, frequently stretch across the path, from bush to 

 bush, and prove very troublesome to the naturalist while 

 threading the thickets where they are numerous. 



The imagination can scarcely conceive the bizarre, 

 and fantastic shapes with which it has pleased Nature 

 to invest those hard -bodied Spiders, called by naturalists 

 Acrosoma. They have large, angular spines sticking 

 out of their bodies, in every kind of fashion, perhaps 

 intended as some sort of defence against the soft-billed 

 birds, which doubtless would otherwise make dainty 

 meals of these Arachnidans, exposed as they are, tempt- 

 ingly suspended in mid air, on their transparent webs 

 in the forest glades. Some are protected by these long 

 spines to such a degree, that their bodies resemble a 

 miniature " cheveux de frise ", and could not, by any 

 possibility be swallowed by a bird without producing a 



