1883.] MR. H. O. FORBES ON A SPIDER FROM SUMATRA. .587 



plucked tlie leaf by the petiole while so cogitating, and looked at it 

 half listlessly for some moments, mentally remarking how closely 

 that other Spider had copied nature, when, to my delighted surprise, 

 I discovered I had actually secured a second specimen, but the imita- 

 tion was so exquisite that I really did not perceive how matters stood 

 for some moments. The Spider never moved while I was plucking 

 or twirling the leaf, and it was only when I placed the tip of my 

 little finger on it, that I observed that it was a Spider, when it, 

 without any displacement of itself, flashed its falces into my flesh. 



The first specimen I got was in W. Java, while hunting one day 

 for Lepidoptera. I observed a specimen of one of the Hesperidse 

 sitting, as is often a custom of theirs, on the excreta of a bird on a 

 leaf; I crept near it, intending to examine what they find in what 

 one is inclined to consider incongruous food for a Butterfly. I 

 approached nearer and nearer, and at last caught it between my 

 fingers, when I found that it had as I thought become glued by its 

 feet to the mass ,: but on pulling gently the Spider to my amazement 

 disclosed itself by letting go its hold ; only then did I discover that 

 I was not looking on a veritable bird's excreta. Though I preserved 

 the interesting specimens, both Butterfly and Spider, carefully 

 labelled them, attaching to them these notes, and sent them home, 

 to my surprise no interest was awakened in the specimen, and I 

 heard nothing of it, nor can I trace its subsequent history. 



Allow me here to digress for a moment to animadvert in the 

 strongest possible way on the habit of too many purchasers, collectors 

 (not field collectors) and describers of collections, who, having 

 acquired numbered specimens, take not the slightest care to record, 

 when cataloguing or describing the species gathered in a locality, the 

 number on the specimen. I have with the extremest care (a habit I 

 owe to the example of our lamented Prosector when we used to hunt 

 weekly together in the Scotch hills) labelled every single specimen I 

 have collected, and entered it with my field-notes in my journal ; but 

 of all the thousand specimens sent home, I can trace no more perhaps 

 than a score. I am informed by my agent that " no one cares a fig 

 for the history or the num.ber attached to a specimen ; it is the speci- 

 men alone they care for, and no one will agree or promise either to 

 retain or record the number." Surely the acquirers of collections owe 

 by an unwritten law to the field-worker this amount of recompense 

 for the toil and often risk at which they have been obtained, — to 

 assist him in identifying his specimens with his notes, and to add 

 to the store of knowledge on the habits of the species, which in nearly 

 all groups is so very scanty. 



The present specimen was sent home some year and half ago, and 

 turned up recently, having been unrecognized as anything of interest. 

 I regret that the leaf on which it posed has gone astray ; but the 

 figure (Plate LI.) accurately represents the position assumed on it by 

 the Arachnid. The Spider is in general colour white, spotted here and 

 there with black ; on the underside its rather irregularly shaped and 

 prominent abdomen is almost all white, of a pure chalk white ; the 

 angles of the legs are, however, shining jet-black. The Spider does 



