Arachnida. 7715 



PS. — I learn that another specimen of the above species has been 

 taken, also in a salraon-net, at a place called Pennan. Pennan is in 

 Aberdeenshire, and only a few miles from where the first was caught. 

 This one, I believe, has been kept alive, and its captors are asto- 

 nishing the natives, who are flocking from far and near to see the 

 '• rare fish."— r. E. ; August 17. 



On a Spider (Neiiene errans) inhahiling Coal Mines. — During the commencement 

 of last year my attention was directed to the immense sheets of web-like material 

 which abound in the "waste "or old workings of the Pelton Colliery. These webs 

 attain a most gigantic size, some of tliem having been seen npwards of twenty or thirty 

 feet in length, by four or five in height, and some even more, and they all, in conse- 

 quence of the coal dust with which they are densely covered, present an opaque blackish 

 appearance. I was informed that they had generally been considered to be the myce- 

 lium of a fungus, but not feeling at all convinced of this I determined to subject them 

 to a more rigid examination than they had yet received. For this purpose, in February, 

 I860, I descended the pit with two of the wastemen, from whom I learned en route, 

 and soon afterwards ascertained from actual experience, that, however interesting a 

 subject they might be to the naturalist, they formed most disagreeable impediments to 

 the progress of any one passing through them ; these men also assured me that they 

 were, in their opinion, not Fungi, but most certainly spiders' webs, and that furthermore 

 they had often seen minute spiders engaged in spinning them. This fact was com- 

 pletely verified on our arriving at the locale where the webs were the most plentiful, as 

 I at once detected on them scores of small spiders, some busily occupied in the fabric- 

 ation of the webs, and others rapidly dropping to the ground on our approach. By 

 subsequent and more extended observations I remarked that these insects are eminently 

 gregarious, assembling in large numbers to construct fresh webs, or to repair any rents 

 or damages in the older ones, and also that their continual abode in the total darkness of 

 the coal-pit does not seem to have deprived them of their susceptibility to light, as on 

 the approach of the lamps they may be seen scampering about in great agitation, and 

 dropping from their webs to the floor of the galleries. Would it not be an intere>tiug 

 problem to solve, whether, after the total absence of light for several generations, as it 

 must frequently happen, their eyes still retain the same faculty of transmitting the 

 image of objects to the retina as they possessed before their conversion into " miners,'' 

 or whether their apparent commotion derives its origin from some other sense than 

 that of sight? — David P. Morison, in ^, Transactions of the Tyneside Naturalists' 

 Field Club,' vol. v. part \,p. 49. [The reader is referred to a previous record of Mr. 

 Morison's interesting discovery, by Mr. Meade, in the ' Zoologist ' for 1860 (Zool. 7146). 

 — Edward Newman]. 



Note on the Irish Zygancs. — The remarks of my friend Edward Newman (Zool. 

 7676), respecting the Irish Zygaenae, will no doubt lead many of the readers of the 

 ' Zoologist' to suppose that M. Gucnee has examiued a number_of specimens, and 



