CRAB-SPIDER OR MATOUTOU. Mygale eancerides. 



fabrications of the imagination. Experiments were also tried, dead humming-birds being 

 put into the dens of these Spiders, without any result, and the whole of Madame Merian's 

 account was boldly denounced as fabulous. 



Yet there were many observers of nature who continued to think that so painstaking a 

 naturalist as Madame Merian, who had spent many years of her life in constant investiga- 

 tions, was not likely to have given so circumstantial an account without some grounds for 

 it. That she was quite correct in saying that the Spider fed generally on ants, was 

 conceded even by her opponents, and it was just possible that she might not be wholly 

 incorrect in the latter part of her statement. 



Moreover, they thought that the experiments were by no means conclusive, and that 

 the natural conditions were not fulfilled. It was true enough that when a dead humming- 

 bird was pushed into the nest of a Mygale, the creature did not attempt to eat it, but 

 retreated to the back of its den, or tried to get away. They thought that the Mygale 

 Could not be expected to act otherwise, and that there was a vast difference between a 

 dead humming-bird pushed into a burrow in the daytime by a huge heavy-footed biped, 

 and a living humming-bird, asleep at night in its nest upon a tree. An animal of any 

 kind must be left undisturbed, if the observer wishes to gain an insight into its habits ; 

 and if he deliberately violates all the conditions, he can hardly expect favourable results. 

 If a practical naturalist wishes to learn whether the Mygale, a nocturnal being, is in the 

 habit of visiting the trees at night and robbing the nests of the humming-birds when it 

 could not obtain its proper supply of ants, he would hardly set to work in so clumsy a 

 manner as to poke a dead humming-bird into the creature's burrow by day. 



