49& THE BIRD-CATCHING SPIDER, 



thick web, which, when taken out, resembles a 

 leathern purse : but, what is most curious, this 

 house has a door with hinges, like the operculum of 

 some sea shells ; and herself and family, who tenant 

 this nest, open and shut the door whenever they 

 pass oi*' repass *. 



In some places in the forests of Java the webs of 

 Spiders have been found, woven with threads of so 

 strong a texture as not easily to be divided without 

 a knife f. 



Dampier informs Us that, at Campeachy in New 

 Spain, there " is a sort of Spiders of a prodigious 

 size, some nearly as big as a man's fist, with long 

 small legs, like the Spiders in England. They have 

 two fangs, each an inch and a half long, and of a pro- 

 portionable thickness, which are black as jet, smooth 

 as glass,-and at their small end as sharp as a thorn ; 

 these are not straight, but bending. Some persons 

 wear them in their tobacco-pouches to pick their 

 pipes with ; others preserve them for tooth-picks, 

 especially such as are troubled with the tooth-ach; 

 for, if report may be trusted, they will expel that 

 pain. The backs of these Spiders are covered with 

 a dark yellowish down as soft as velvet. Some say 

 they are venomous, and others that they are not > 

 but which of these accounts is to be credited I can- 

 not determine." 



* Darwin's Zoonomia f Staunton. 



