>44 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST, 



ing them out of their hiding places by means of a pair of for- 

 cepS; and carefully consigned them to safe keeping. Some two 

 of these are to be seen alive in a bottle; others have had their 

 share of methylated alcohol or glycerine, so that I am fairly 

 M'ell prepared to exhibit them to-night. 



As I have stated, they are to be found under low-lying shrubs 

 on sand-hills. We went to work by taking hold of the extended 

 branches of the shrub which gave them shelter, and, lifting them 

 up, looked for the web-like galleries which, the spider forms, 

 and around which were scattered the remains of beetles and 

 other insects which had been killed for food. The sight of 

 these fragments led at once to a further search, when perhaps 

 a cocoon containing eggs was discovered — a tolerably sure sign 

 this of the living parent being close at hand, and presenting 

 herself, a black spider with a vermilion streak on the back. 

 One sees that nature herself holds out the warning sign of 

 danger, which even men have adopted, in the bright red 

 colour which is now so freely used in the streets of this 

 city as indicating the necessity for caution. Query — Can this 

 adoption of the red colour as a danger signal be due to 

 a remote inheritance? This, en passant. I am not an 

 arachnologist — that is, I am not given to spider arranging — yet 

 I have in this particular direction a great interest, which I will 

 endeavour to make plain. For one thing, I myself verified the 

 accounts of the poisonous property of this spider, and I believe 

 the native statement regarding the venomous nature of the bite 

 is true. One case, which happened many years ago, was that of 

 the child of a European, somewhere in the Hawkes Bay 

 district, which terminated fatally. Another case was that of a 

 native infant, who suffered severely, but with what result I do 

 not remember. 



Another point of interest is that there is a kind of cousin- 

 german of this katipo in Australia, to which I will refer 

 hy and by. The katipo is about the size of a small pea ; 

 the body and legs quite black; in fact, velvety black. A 

 bright vermilion stripe passes down the back, and gives 

 the characteristic mark of the creature to the ordinary 

 beholder. The cocoons, or bags, which the katipo weaves for 

 her eggs are fully the size of a pea, and are generally found 

 mixed up with the irregular web constituting a gallery at the 

 lower portion of the shrub which shelters the spider. In the 

 bottle which contains the living specimens I exhibit to-night, 

 there are two of these cocoons which have yielded up their 

 contents in the form of a number of minute baby spiders, 

 which, however, have been perhaps starved out for want of 

 proper infant spider food. On occasions I have fed the small 

 colony with flies, and I have seen these attacked by the older 

 spiders. For the last six weeks, however, there has been no 



