TEGENERIA MEDICINALIS. 



begins to lay till she is two years old, and her first brood is 

 never so numerous as when she arrives at full maturity. 

 When the eggs have continued to dry for an hour or two 

 after exclusion, the spider prepares a bag for their reception, 

 where they remain to be hatched till they leave the shell. 

 For this purpose she spins a web four or five times stronger 

 than that intended for the catching of flies. This bag, when 

 completed, is as thick as paper, smooth on the inside, but 

 somewhat rough without ; in this the eggs are deposited, and 

 nothing can exceed the concern and industry which the parent 

 manifests in the preservation of it. By means of the glutinous 

 fluid it is stuck to the extremity of. her body, so that when 

 thus loaded she appears as if double. If the bag should hap- 

 pen by any accident to be separated from her, all her assi- 

 duity is employed to fix it again in its former situation ; and 

 this precious treasure she seldom abandons but with her life. 

 When the young are excluded from their shells within the 

 bag, they remain for some time in their confinement, till the 

 female, instinctively knowing their maturity, bites open their 

 prison and sets them at liberty. But her parental care does 

 not terminate with their exclusion ; she receives them on her 

 back from time to time, till, having acquired sufficient strength 

 to provide for themselves, they leave her to return no more 

 and each commences a web for itself. The young ones begin 

 to spin when they are scarcely large enough to be discerned, 

 and discover their propensity to a life of plunder before na- 

 ture has conferred on them strength for the conquest. 



Spiders, it is said, though somewhat disgusting in their ap- 

 pearance in many other countries, are in Borneo of quite a 

 different nature, and are the most beautiful of the insect 

 tribe! They have a skin of a shell-like texture, furnished with 

 curious processes, in some long, in others short, in some few, 

 in others numerous, but are found of this description only in 

 thick woo4s and shady places. Their colors are of every 

 hue, brilliant and metallic as the feathers of the humming- 

 bird ; but are, unlike the bright colors of the beetle, totally 

 dependent on the life of the insect which they beautify, so 

 that it is impossible to preserve them. 



In the Excursions to Arran^ by the Rev. D. Landsborough, 

 is an account of the persevering labors of an Epeira, "who 

 had pitched his tent by the way-side," which is sufficiently 

 interesting to warrant extracting nearly the whole of it. " The 



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