MANUAL OF NATURAL HISTORY. 271 



Spiders, pass their days pleasantly in the chase, 

 and often travel to considerable distances, such are 

 the great powerful Bird-Spiders (Mygale), the Ta- 

 rantulas, the Jumping-Spiders (Attus), and those 

 that move with cautious sidelong pace, as Thomisus 

 and Sparassus. In many tropical countries the 

 threads of gigantic species of Spiders (Nephila) are 

 sufficiently strong to entangle small birds, and even 

 to prove troublesome to the passage of the traveller 

 through the woods. These artful nets of "long- 

 legged spinners" are, moreover, of different colours 

 according to the nature of the weaver, being white, 

 yellow, blue, and green ; and in Mexico there is one 

 composed of red, yellow, and black threads, inter- 

 laced with great and singular ingenuity. 



Among other remarkable snares constructed by 

 these daughters of Arachne may be mentioned that of 

 the Trap-door Spiders, species of Cteniza, which bore 

 galleries in the ground, coat the walls with mortar, 

 line them with silk, and fit a door with a hinge, to 

 the aperture ; another curious application of their 

 spinning powers is seen in the fabrication of the 

 diving-bell of the Water-Spider (Argyroneta aqua- 

 tica), which is an oval cocoon filled with air, lined 

 with silk, and fastened by lines to plants under the 

 water ; one of the authors presented to the Linnagan 

 Society the habitation of a Madagascar Spider com- 

 posed of grains of quartz- sand united together by 

 a fine web, forming a horn-shaped nest ; these hung 

 from the low shrubs that grow near the shore ride out 

 in safety gales that would destroy ordinary webs. 



